Self-styled 'TikTok King' Christopher Luxon has mixed gags with more serious messages. Image / @christopherluxonmp
OPINION
US lawmakers have voted for TikTok’s sale or ban. But its parent, ByteDance, still has a couple of aces up its sleeve. Plus: The situation in NZ, where the Parliamentary Service has blocked the app after consulting with cybersecurity experts, but the PM has emerged as the self-styled “TikTok King”.
On March 7, a bipartisan group of US lawmakers received a closed-door security briefing on TikTok.
Whatever those members of the Energy and Commerce Committee saw was sufficiently disturbing that they voted 50-0 to fast-track legislation that would force the app’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the app or face a ban.
Anyone with even a passing interest in US politics knows how rare it’s become for Republicans and Democrats to agree on anything these days.
It kicked off a fast-track process that saw the House and Senate pass legislation - signed by President Joe Biden on April 24 - that required ByteDance to sell TikTok within 12 months or see the app disappear from American phones (if a ban goes ahead, TikTok would not suddenly disappear from phones, but app stores would face penalties if they allowed people to download updates, meaning it would slowly wither).
ByteDance called the ban unconstitutional. The firm said it had spent billions to secure its users’ data on Oracle servers in the US (although the algorithms that control that data are perhaps the larger point of contention), and that it has never shared data with the Chinese Government and would refuse any request.
That notwithstanding, TikTok is already banned on US government phones.
US lawmakers have increasingly expressed concern that TikTok might put sensitive user data, like location information, into the hands of the Chinese government, the New York Times has reported.
They have pointed to laws that allow the Chinese government to secretly demand data from Chinese companies and citizens for intelligence-gathering operations.
And they are also worried that China could use TikTok’s content recommendations to fuel misinformation.
But here’s the rub
The Biden administration’s hostility toward TikTok is only matched by the President’s newfound enthusiasm for using the app.
His re-election campaign has posted more than 120 videos featuring the President since a new account (@bidenhq) was created in February - which has been billed as a channel for reaching the under-30s.
Here, there is not even the beginnings of any legislative move against TikTok, but various Government agencies have moved assertively to ban the app - at the same time as our leader uses it with as much enthusiasm as the US President.
On March 17 last year, Parliamentary Service chief executive Rafael Gonzalez-Montero said TikTok would be removed from all devices with access to Parliament applications by the end of the month, based “on the advice of cyber security experts” and discussion within Government and with other countries.
“The risks are not acceptable,” the Parliamentary Service boss said.
He added, “Arrangements can be made for those who require the app to perform their democratic duties.”
The NZ Defence Force had already banned TikTok from NZDF-issued phones, and issued a directive that NZDF devices should not be used to access TikTok from the web.
An NZDF chief information security officer directive, released under an Official Information Act request, dated November 1, 2022, said “TikTok reportedly collects significant amounts of user data, such as contact lists, calendars, the contents of a person’s hard drive, and can geolocate a user’s device on an hourly basis.”
But then there’s the same cognitive dissonance as the US. At the same time as much of our political apparatus is calling TikTok a security threat, our leaders are celebrating it.
The verified “christopherluxonmp” account appeared on TikTok shortly before the Parliamentary Service ban, and the “TikTok king” (as he refers to himself, tongue-in-cheek) frequently posts to the platform as PM. Labour leader Chris Hipkins is also on the app.
It should be noted that each of Luxon’s posts generates a mixed-bag of cheers, jibes and (in common with all social media platforms) many who go off the deep with nonsense or personal abuse.
Also that TikTok also carries many accounts devoted to energetically attacking the PM - some of which its algorithm will send your way if you view his official account.
The average punter could well scratch their head and ask “How bad can these security risks be if Biden and Luxon use TikTok?”
A spokeswoman for the Parliamentary Service said its ban remained in place.
The Herald asked Luxon’s office if he is posting to his TikTok from his official phone, a personal device or a device controlled by one of the members of his seven-strong social media team - and whether he had sought GCSB advice over using the platform.
“Christopher Luxon’s TikTok account is run entirely outside the parliamentary network,” a spokesman said.
There was no direct response to the security advice question.
Shortly before the Parliamentary Service ban, TikTok said its NZ users’ data is stored in Singapore and the US, with access only approved by its “global security organisation led out of the US”. But it also confirmed to NewsTalk ZB that engineering teams in China (as well as the US, UK, Singapore and Ireland) could access Kiwis’ data.
There are many countries where TikTok has been banned from lawmakers’ phones, and devices used by their staff, including, Australia, Canada, the UK and most of the EU.
There is precedent for a complete ban. India issued a temporary block on TikTok, WeChat and a number of other Chinese-owned apps in 2020. In 2021, the ban was made permanent, with the government saying the apps were “stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data in an unauthorised manner to servers which have locations outside India”.
(TikTok is also absent from its home market, where ByteDance operates a more buttoned-down app called Douyin. TikTok pulled out of Hong Kong after a sweeping new security law came into effect in 2020.)
Changes are likely here if the US legislation leads to a concrete outcome - which the odds seem against.
Chinese companies do get banned in the US. Just ask Huawei (also blocked from telco networks here) or Hikvision (the security camera maker whose product remains popular with Auckland Transport and various government departments).
But ByteDance will be keenly aware that despite the uncommon Republican-Democrat consensus against it in Congress, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has emerged as one of TikTok’s biggest defenders - and that he could be re-installed in the White House after November’s election.
Trump was not always a fan. In August 2020, the then-President issued an executive order “addressing the threat posed by TikTok”, which directed that the app be sold or banned within 45 days.
“The United States must take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok to protect our national security,” Trump’s order said.
“TikTok automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users, including Internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search histories. This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”
TikTok has been used to promote pandemic disinformation in the US, while its algorithm sidelined topics the Chinese Government considered sensitive, the order alleged.
ByteDance said the executive order was protectionist political posturing. The Chinese firm challenged the ban through the US courts and successfully won a preliminary injunction in September 2023, which was still in effect when Trump was voted out of power in November that year.
In March this year, Trump said he opposed a sale or ban, saying it would only empower Facebook, which he called the “enemy of the people”.
The ex-President is not on TikTok itself (his content only appears on his own Truth Social), but it has emerged as a major platform for pro-“MAGA” content.
There’s also been a shift in the background commercial landscape. Billionaire Wall Street financier and Republican “megadonor” Jeff Yass is an investor in both ByteDance and the newly-listed Trump Media & Technology, owner of the ex-president’s Truth Social platform. The New York Times reported that Yass had recruited a number of ex-Trump staffers to lobby against a TikTok ban. Trump said his position had not been influenced by Yass.
Beyond Trump’s potential to regain power, Biden’s ban will likely face legal challenges. The American Council For Civil Liberties is among those that have raised free-speech First Amendment concerns. A Montana judge has already ruled a state-level ban unconstitutional.
Then there’s the practical matter of any forced sale. Privately held-ByteDance has never released accounts. According to a Wall Street Journal report, its executives have previously considered TikTok’s global operations to be worth about half of the Chinese company’s overall value, which would put it above US$100 billion.
At that value, the only firms who could buy it would be a member of the so-called “Magnificent Seven” (Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla). Any of those firms would love to get hold of TikTok’s algorithms.
Yet each will also be keenly aware that any deal of that scale will almost certainly attract an antitrust challenge from US regulators - and that TikTok’s secret sauce probably won’t be part of the deal.
There could also be grassroots opposition. TikTok’s Singapore-based chief executive Shou Zi Chew says some five million American businesses use his firm’s platform - and they’ll suffer if they lose access. (He always makes a relatable case. Unlike the heads of many big firms, Chew has the gift of the gab and always seems comfortable in his own skin - even if a Financial Times report maintained that the Beijing-based ByteDance has tightened control over the past two years.)
@awkwardmama107 Shou Zi Chew (CEO Of TikTok) Response To "TikTok Ban Bill" #Shou #Zi #Chew #TikTok #CEO #Response #TikTokBanBill
♬ original sound - Awkwardmama107
Overall - and presumably discounting for an army of bots - TikTok claims some 179 million users in the US. And many of those with larger followings have answered Chew’s call to speak out against Biden’s ban.
But many are also covering their bets.
It’s hard to find any TikTok creator of any scale who hasn’t also set up shop on Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts, and frequently implored their users to follow them on those platforms as well, lest a TikTok ban actually come into force. So Americans will still be able to learn how to clean an air fryer with baking soda in under 90 seconds, discover a secret code to get 10 per cent off a Stanley Cup knockoff, or hear from their favourite MAGA influencer. The algorithm just won’t be quite as slick.
And the potential ban comes at a time when, after years of rampant growth, TikTok has now stalled in the US, according to the Wall Street Journal, quoting figures collected by Data.ai and un-named insiders, with as many leaving the platform as arrive (ByteDance has never released detailed figures).
Failed contract renewal talks with Universal Music - the world’s largest music label - rendered many lip-synching tracks on the platform silent.
And some American users have complained that TikTok Shop - a new feature seen as a major part of ByteDance’s drive to push TikTok into profit (no figures have been released) - has turned some content from addictive to dull and overbearing as influencers hard-sell products. After a slow start, Meta’s Instagram Reels is gaining ground.
As things stand, the free market is TikTok’s biggest threat.
If lawmakers anywhere want to really get a handle on TikTok - or any of its Western-owned rivals - they need to require it to share its algorithms with regulators as a condition of its operation.
QUICK TAKES
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.
A newspaper has been saved, paving the way for several similar deals for other towns.