WeChat is a multi-purpose app, owned by Tencent Holdings, with all imaginable apps that are available combined into one app. With its 1,2 billion users and endless possibilities, it is widely implemented into Chinese society. Like all Chinese social media platforms, it uses governmental censorship.
TikTok is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance and has over one billion users. It is evidenced to collect a huge amount of data on its users including which videos are watched and commented on, location data, phone model and operating system used (Tidy, 2020). This type of data, however, is also collected by Reddit, LinkedIn and Facebook. The difference with those social media platforms and Tiktok is that Tiktok is controlled by Chinese companies instead of American ones, which rises the possibility of personal data falling into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (Tidy, 2020). TikTok states they would reject requests concerning sharing data, but displeasing the Communist Party could have consequences for the entire company and its leadership and is therefore not likely to be the chosen strategy when such a request occurs.
The American government has recently declared the apps to be a severe threat to the national cyber security. The Trump administration thinks that WeChat en TikTok threaten national security and pass user data on to the Chinese government. Data collection by those Chinese apps allows the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal information (Deagon, 2020). Another large concern is censorship, which influences the content to be biased in favour of the Chinese state (Tidy, 2020).
The department of Commerce said it would ban TikTok and WeChat from any app store, making it impossible to download the apps (BBC news, 2020). After Trump announced the executive orders, the stocks of multiple Chinese companies fell, including Alibaba, Huya and Tencent (Deagon, 2020). This illustrates the recent tensions and insecurity between America and China, which are likely to increase now (Restuccia, 2020).
Trump has declared that WeChat was going to be banned, on the 20th of September. However, an independent US judge decided that this was not in accordance with the law (BBC News, 2020). She states that the ban is in opposition to the constitution’s first amendment; free speech. However, Trump is not giving up already and this will be continued…
The attack on WeChat is of larger interest for the Chinese government than the alleged TikTok ban. WeChat users are not only Chinese citizens, but also foreigners who have ties in China. Furthermore, WeChat’s mother-company Tencent has a history of cooperating with the Chinese government in multiple areas and boasts the national economy with nearly 700 billion dollars (Restuccia, 2020). Tiktok is not nearly as profitable and crucial as WeChat.
The president stated that the ongoing security issues need to be resolved by the twelfth of November, otherwise TikTok will await the same faith as WeChat. We will just have to wait and see. Now I’m curious, are you afraid of Chinese government interference in the Western world or do you think this is all exaggerated distrust of the Trump government? And how do you feel about social media apps gathering your personal data? Let me know in the comments!
References
– BBC News. (2020, 18 september). TikTok and WeChat: US to ban app downloads in 48 hours. (Online) Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology- 54205231?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/c255806071xt/tiktok& link_location=live-reporting-story
– BBC News. (2020b, september 20). Judge blocks US attempts to ban China’s WeChat. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54223980
– Deagon, B. (2020). China Stocks Hit By Trump Executive Order Targeting TikTok, WeChat. Investors Business Daily.
– Restuccia, A. (2020, Aug 07). Trump executive orders target TikTok, WeChat apps; limitations on the chinese apps are likely to increase tensions with beijing. Wall Street Journal (Online) Retrieved from https://search-proquest- com.eur.idm.oclc.org/docview/2430801548?accountid=13598
– Tidy, B. J. (2020, 3 augustus). TikTok: What is the app and how much data does it collect? BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53476117
Thank you for this interesting and contemporary blogpost. I appreciate you used several sources and looked at it from different kind of news sources. What I had also valued was maybe an American source to see how they judged Trumps decision. Besides, I am very curious about a new app America might develop as a replacement for TikTok. Have you seen that development online?
About your question regarding social media apps gathering your personal data: that is a topic i’m worried about. Especially after watching The Social Dilemma documentary. It is a topic where we are becoming increasingly aware of.
Great piece of work Eva! I appreciate the sources a lot.
Well general discussion on social media is spurring our own cultural bias towards what we accept as ‘acceptable’ indoctrination and what we dismiss. There is a huge gap between perceived ‘privatisation’ of your own data between for example Germans, British or Americans. All in all I believe Trump is putting a wall between western sphere of influence and Asian (Chinese), and in long term we might benefit from it.