TikTok’s latest transparency report claims that the Chinese-owned video app received no takedown or user information requests from the communist government of China.
Wired reports that Chinese-owned social media app TikTok has published a new transparency report in an attempt to reassure those skeptical about the company’s security and censorship practices. Following in the footsteps of some American tech firms, the company decided to publish a transparency report detailing its actions over the past year.
TikTok stated in the transparency report that it received 298 legal requests for user information and 26 government takedown requests during the first half of 2019. Eric Ebenstein, TikTok’s director of public policy, wrote in a blog post: “To foster candid dialogue essential to earning and maintaining trust, we’re releasing our first Transparency Report this year to show how we responsibly engage with government bodies in the markets where TikTok operates.”
Digital rights group Access Now calls transparency reporting: “one of the strongest ways for technology companies to disclose threats to user privacy and free expression.” In 2018, 60 tech companies released transparency reports.
TikTok’s latest transparency report claims that from January 1 to June 30, 2019, the app received no takedown or user information requests from China. Similarly, Facebook and Google also received zero requests in the same time frame, however, Facebook and Google’s services are not available in China. This did not stop the Chinese government from submitting 133 content takedown requests for over 1,500 YouTube videos, however, which YouTube declined to comply with.
Wired notes that the transparency report does not address the other ways that ByteDance and China can influence content on the TikTok app, such as shaping moderation rules. TikTok has not revealed how often content is removed in accordance with the apps Community Guidelines. The largest number of government requests for user information came from India which made 107 requests. TikTok claims that it only honored 47 percent of these requests.
The United States made 79 requests for user information, TikTok complied with 86 percent of these requests. In October of 2019, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) asked the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, to investigate the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok to determine if it poses “national security risks.”
“With over 110 million downloads in the U.S. alone, TikTok is a potential counterintelligence threat we cannot ignore,” wrote Schumer and Cotton, who currently sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “Given these concerns, we ask that the Intelligence Community conduct an assessment of the national security risks posed by TikTok and other China-based content platforms operating in the U.S. and brief Congress on these findings.”
TikTok published a response to this in an unsigned blog post in which the company stressed its independence from China. The firm stated that it is not “subject to Chinese law,” and stressed that it has “never been asked by the Chinese government to remove any content and we would not do so if asked.”
The senators stated that they feared that TikTok would be forced to adhere to Chinese laws which would “compel Chinese companies to support and cooperate with intelligence work controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.” Schumer and Cotton worried that TikTok could be a “potential target of foreign influence campaigns like those carried out during the 2016 election on U.S.-based social media platforms.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) recently called on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to review the acquisition of social media app Musical.ly by TikTok owner Beijing ByteDance Technology Co. over claims that TikTok is used by the Chinese government to censor certain political content.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com
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