In case you thought that GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s embrace of TikTok was no big deal, we now have even more information about how the Chinese-owned app exploits user data far beyond that of any other social media site.
A Forbes review of an internal social graph tool used by TikTok, along with interviews with TikTok employees, found that people at parent company ByteDance have broad access to the private contact details of users. “What sets TikTok apart,” according to employees, “is the apparent lack of controls that exist on such intimate data; the ease with which it can be mined by workers who don’t need access to it; and the inferences staff can make about individual users and their social circles from that data.”
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The Forbes report details that “employees who’ve focused on privacy and security at TikTok worry about the fact that nearly anyone with default access to company tools — including staff in China — have been able to easily look up the closest (sometimes deeply personal) contacts and sprawling networks of any account, public or private, on the backend."
As an example, the report cites material that showed that “one query of a male public figure appeared to reveal that he’d been engaging with a prominent Hollywood actress, an OnlyFans star and the female editor-in-chief of a magazine.”
That means that employees of ByteDance, a Chinese company that is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party, have access to the communications and contacts on the app of “several Biden family members, U.S. senators, governors, state attorneys general, candidates for public office, political pundits and official campaign accounts.”
If you need a refresher on TikTok’s other privacy and security issues, the app has been caught logging the keystrokes of users in violation of Google and Apple store policies. ByteDance had planned to use the app to collect location data for at least two American citizens. American users have had their data accessed from China, which TikTok promised was not possible.
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It does not take a genius to see that TikTok is Chinese spyware. There is a reason that government agencies have banned it on government devices. ByteDance is required by law to share data with the Chinese Communist Party, and it collects far more data than its American social media counterparts. Government agencies, banks, and other companies aren’t banning the app on devices issued to employees just because it’s a time-waster.
TikTok is a Chinese spyware app, and no presidential hopeful should be using the app for any reason, let alone some mistaken impression that it is the key to winning young voters for the GOP. The app is a data funnel for the CCP, and a responsible president would be working to ban it no matter the real or perceived political cost.