in the aftermath About TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew’s brutal five-hour congressional hearings, TikToker and disinformation researcher Abbie Richards has summed up what so many creators think. .
Across TikTok, users mocked members of Congress for misunderstanding how the technology works. I asked if I was connected to my home Wi-Fi network. Bewildered, Chew replied, “Only if the user turns on his Wi-Fi.”
The ignorant questions weren’t unique to the government’s interrogation of Chu. At a high-profile hearing in 2018, the late Senator Orinhatch (R-Utah) told Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg how Facebook would make money if the app was free. Are you raising the infamous question? “Senator, we’re advertising,” Zuckerberg replied, unable to hold back a grin. I created another product. Notorious viral moment By asking Facebook’s global safety officer if they’re “committed to ending finsta.”
These basic knowledge gaps are fun, but the creators of TikTok have serious concerns about the future of the app given their community and, in some cases, careers.
Vitus “V” Spehar, creator of TikTok known as Under the Desk News, has amassed 2.9 million followers by sharing global news in a friendly way. But in this week’s news cycle, they’re front and center (literally, they were sitting right after his TikTok CEO testified).
“I think it’s really concerning that the government is considering excluding American citizens from the global conversation with apps as robust as TikTok,” Spehar told TechCrunch. This means not only banning the app in the US, but cutting US citizens off from Canada, the UK, Mexico, Iran, Ukraine, and all the frontline reports we see coming from these countries. [For You Page]”
Spehar is part of a group of TikTok creators who traveled to Washington, D.C. this week to stand by TikTok and oppose the looming threat of a nationwide ban. They attended a press conference Wednesday afternoon hosted by Congressman Jamal Bowman (D-NY), who questioned what he described as the “hysteria and panic” surrounding TikTok.
Vitus Spehar, host of the TikTok channel Under The News Desk, will host a live stream of a press conference outside the US Capitol in Washington DC, USA on Wednesday, March 22, 2023. (Nathan Howard/Bloomberg)
“Congress has made it clear that they do not understand TikTok, that they are not listening to voters in the TikTok community, and that they are calling this TikTok hysteria any app they can think of. We are using it as a way to pass a law that would give us banning superpowers.It is ‘not safe’ in the future,” Speher said after the hearing.
Tech ethicists and creators alike share this frustration. Casey Fiesler, Ph.D., professor of tech ethics and policy at the University of Colorado Boulder, believes the national security concerns about the app are exaggerated.
“Risk seems completely speculative right now,” Fissler said. She leads an audience of over 100,000 followers on TikTok, exploring issues such as the nuances of content moderation and other topics that may come up in her graduate courses.
“I don’t think there’s a way to frame this as a general data privacy issue without going after every other tech company,” Fiesler told TechCrunch. “The only thing that makes sense is the fact that the company is literally based in China.”
There is no evidence yet that TikTok shared data with the Chinese government. An investigation last year found that a Chinese engineer had open access to a US user’s TikTok data, overturning TikTok’s claims to the contrary. Another report, backed by ByteDance, found that a small group of engineers improperly accessed her TikTok data for two US journalists. They planned to use the location information to determine if his ByteDance employee and the reporter who may have leaked information to the press crossed paths.
Still, TikTokers points to differences in data sharing between Chinese private companies and the Chinese government. TikTok has tried to appease US authorities with a plan called Project Texas, his $1.5 billion business to move US users’ data to Oracle servers. Project Texas also plans to create a subsidiary company, TikTok US Data Security Inc., to oversee all aspects of his TikTok that involve national security.
Spehar favors solutions like Project Texas rather than U.S. government proposals like the RESTRICT Act that would give the U.S. new tools to restrict and possibly ban technology exports from foreign adversaries. said to support
“I don’t think we should be looking at things like restrictive laws and all sorts of sweeping laws that give governments the power to say ‘we’ve decided something isn’t safe,'” they said. told TechCrunch.
Several lawmakers asked Chu about how TikTok is mitigating dangerous trends like the “blackout challenge.” A child died from this behavior after it went viral on TikTok, but this game did not occur on the platform. In 2008, the CDC warned parents that 82 of her children had died in a trend called “choking games.” One lawmaker referred to “NyQuil chicken” as a dangerous trend on TikTok.
“The moral panic around the TikTok challenge, which I have extensively exposed, is only parroted back by politicians who do not understand what moral panic is,” Richards said at TechCrunch. “It was really upsetting to see it being used against TikTok, taking misinformation that I’ve written about so many times and trying to debunk it.”
Richards admits that TikTok’s best features are also its worst. She believes TikTok’s “bottom-up” information environment fosters misinformation, but the same dynamic can also surface great content that would never be published on another social her network. .
Richards is also a vocal critic of TikTok’s content moderation policies. This policy, like all other social networks, may not always be applied equally. At Thursday’s hearing, Rep. Kat Kamack (R-Florida) pictured a gun alongside text threatening the leader of the House committee that coordinated Chu’s testimony a month before his death. Dramatically screened TikTok videos. While this clearly violates TikTok’s content guidelines for him, Richards notes there has been little engagement.
“In the context of TikTok, 40 likes is effective moderation,” Richards said. “It means the videos aren’t reaching too many people.” The potential for harm is limited if it does not reach a large number of users.
Other creators share how TikTok empowers Americans, including LGBTQ+ people who found a community on the app, and small business owners who were able to grow beyond their wildest dreams after going viral. He expressed dissatisfaction that MPs did not consider whether he had helped.
Naomi Hearts, creator of Trans Latina with 1 million TikTok followers, was invited by TikTok to support the app in DC (TikTok is supporting this effort, including Spehar, by covering accommodation and travel costs). I compensated the creator’s group). She said she met other TikTokers during her travels. They were using apps to drive small businesses.
She, too, found an audience on TikTok she couldn’t build anywhere else after struggling to build a following on Instagram. But on TikTok, even a small account can go viral, a phenomenon that, if successful, can jump-start your career.
Naomi Hertz noted on Instagram, “Messages from normal people… like, I’m a plus size transgender woman who grew up in South Central Los Angeles and had a dream. My message was there. There was no,” he said.
Spehar also emphasized TikTok’s role in helping people successfully connect outside of their everyday surroundings.
“You can find a community that you can’t find where you live,” says Spehar. “I’m thinking about the kids in Northwest Arkansas and Tennessee. TikTok is literally one of the reasons they’re not dying because they know they’re not alone. .”
Richards writes mostly about disinformation about TikTok, but laments the positive aspects of the app that could be lost if the app is banned in the US.
“Banning TikTok will ultimately hurt marginalized communities the least represented by organized news and organizations,” Richards said. If the whole suddenly disappears, they will suddenly fall into darkness.”
