"Tiktok content is accessible and adjustable by China"

China has access to and can manipulate material on TikTok.

In the U.S., there's a lot of talk about TikTok: This popular short video platform could be sold or banned, as it's owned by the Chinese company Bytedance. They're accused of spying and data leaks, and have close ties to the communist party. The Chinese government can even directly influence the company.

On TikTok, you'll find influencers rating cake varieties, Italian prime ministers holding yellow melons, and Ukrainian soldiers showing their destroyed homelands. It's a never-ending stream of entertaining, often absurd, sometimes informative, and occasionally manipulative content.

TikTok is used by 1.5 billion people worldwide, coming in second only to Facebook, YouTube, Whatsapp, and Instagram. In Germany, over half of all teenagers regularly use TikTok, according to the JIM Youth Study 2023.

Bytedance, the parent company, was founded in 2012 and is now active globally. The Chinese version, Douyin, has been available since 2016, while TikTok went online for the global market in 2017.

China's "Golden Shares" and Influence

Bytedance isn't just any regular tech company - the Chinese government has a say in its operations. Lena Ulbricht, a professor in political philosophy and theory at the Technical University of Munich, explains in the ntv podcast "Learned Again" that "The Chinese government sits on Bytedance's supervisory board and thus has the ability to influence the strategic direction of the company." This doesn't mean micromanaging the app but rather making big decisions about markets, strategies, and business models.

In 2021, the Chinese government bought one percent of Bytedance's most important subsidiary, Beijing Bytedance Technology, also known as "golden shares. This gives them the power to appoint one of the three managing directors of the subsidiary. "Beijing has significant influence on the business of Bytedance," notes the US think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Professor Ulbricht also points out that the government can access and influence content, as per the terms of use. She explains, "In China, companies are in a constant dialogue with the government. The government seeks to influence the company's activities and, in part, it's also about promoting certain socialist values. The companies, in turn, want to exist in markets and continue developing their business models."

The Communist Party's Presence within the Company

Not only is the Chinese government represented on the supervisory board, but the Communist Party is also present in other parts of the company. This is common practice in Chinese companies, even in German ones in the People's Republic. According to a former Bytedance manager, there are special units in the Beijing offices that monitor how the company promotes central communist values.

Ulbricht explains the relationship between TikTok and the government in the podcast, saying, "Companies are in a constant dialogue with the government. The government seeks influence on the company's activities and promotes certain socialist values. Companies want to exist in markets and further develop their business models." TikTok denies these allegations.

There's also censorship on TikTok. Ulbricht tells us "It's not entirely clear whether this is a result of government influence or if TikTok is doing this to avoid criticism within China." However, TikTok's behavior varies in different countries.

A special committee of Communist Party members within the company can view all the data collected by Bytedance, including that of US users, using a "Superuser" or "God" login name.

Certain posts are also filtered out on TikTok. These contributions aren't deleted but are made less visible by the algorithm, a process known as shadowbanning. Experts say all apps struggle with content control due to the large volume of content.

Tiktok has specific policies about what kind of content it allows. Two U.S. research groups found that posts related to the Hong Kong protests, Taiwan, and Uighurs, or pro-Ukraine or pro-Israel content are rarely seen on TikTok. The Wall Street Journal found that many videos about the Gaza War on TikTok in 2023, with more than half being pro-Palestinian.

"Political content that relates to violence and terrorism is blocked," says the TikTok expert. Tiktok also doesn't allow human rights violations against Uighurs by the Chinese government to be seen. Content related to sexuality is also filtered out. However, teenagers find creative ways to bypass this: "Young people, for example, upload makeup tutorials and talk about human rights violations."

Apart from managing content, TikTok is also being accused of espionage. The app suspiciously connects with the Chinese government, leading many nations to ban it on official gadgets, including Germany, the US, and Canada.

Employees of ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, have been caught spying on journalists who reported on them. User information and IP addresses were tracked to identify leakers within their organization. The company later accepted responsibility, dismissing several employees involved.

Further reports say that Party members used data from ByteDance to locate and identify demonstrators and activists in Hong Kong. They did this using superuser login credentials, where they monitored locations, devices, network information, IP addresses, and communication.

TikTok has access to user information. Private messages are not encrypted end-to-end. The company could potentially read them. The platform collects plenty of data during registration and usage. This includes the location users are in, access to the phone book, contact information, and credit card details, according to tech expert Ulbricht. "TikTok justifies the extensive data collection by saying it allows them to provide relevant content for users and enhance the platform's appeal to them," he added. Most users are unaware of the extent of data collected and that it's used to create profiles.

TikTok also shares user data with 'data brokers' which is a class of companies that trade in user data worldwide. But other top platforms like Facebook and Instagram also collect user data to this extent and are willing to share it, as Ulbricht mentioned in a podcast.

Bytedance states that they don't send data to the Chinese government. And that's true on the surface, says Ulbricht, because user data applies to the respective legal system. In other words, if you're in Germany, they can pass on data to the German government; in the US, user data can be shared with the US government.

However, it seems that the data aren't always staying in the respective countries: a Forbes report revealed that TikTok stored the financial data of European and US influencers on Chinese servers. This data contained sensitive information such as tax and social insurance numbers. These data could potentially be seen by Chinese employees. "Bytedance states that the TikTok servers in the US are in the US. The company headquarters are in the US. No data are transferred to Chinese servers, and there are also no direct communications to the Chinese government," explains Ulbricht. The problem is that it's difficult to control whether the data stays secure on US servers or is actually shared with the Chinese government. "It's a possibility," he added.

The US mistrusts TikTok, and the US branch of the app has until January to be sold or banned. Bytedance is fighting against the mandatory sale, trying to stop it in court.

Ulbricht views this as more of a power struggle between the company and the US government - a high-tech war between the USA and China. "If you want to solve all the issues you have with TikTok in the US, you should instead invest in creating a reliable data protection legislation and implement it, instead of focusing on a specific company or app," he suggested.

Collecting user data and sharing it with governments is routine for tech companies, even those from the US, says the expert - even American tech giants regularly disregard data security. But with TikTok, the Chinese government is directly involved: it sits on the Board of Directors and influences the content and moves it along, can extract data. If you want to protect your data, it might be better not to use TikTok at all.