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app might be able to see that, and then they know that I have a dog, and so now they can start showing me dog toy advertisements. So the question is — and I don’t have a good answer for this — how is the data collected by TikTok and all these other apps being used? Is it just for advertising? Because that still isn’t good, but it doesn’t really bother me if someone wants to show me dog toy advertisements. Or is there some government behind it, using this data in select scenarios to collect, for example, intel about potential targets of interest. Many people, if you suggest that an app may be transmitting their data to a foreign government, are likely to react with indifference. After all, the reasoning goes, as long as you’re not a spy, or working with classified material, why would the government of another country care about little old you — just an ordinary citizen from another country? Wardle cautions that although there is, in one sense, some justification for this attitude, it’s not consistent with people’s feelings about their personal privacy generally — and it doesn’t take into account the way in which governments and corporations make use of data in aggregate. PW: The average American is probably going to say, “Hey, I don’t have anything to hide, I don’t really care if they have this information”. My reply to that is always, “Well, do you shut the door when you go to the bathroom”? And of course the answer is yes, so it’s like, see, you do care about your privacy a little bit — even if you don’t have anything to hide! Look, if we’re talking about the data of the average teenager using TikTok, I don’t think anybody really cares about that data per se. But in aggregate, there’s more information there, especially to advertisers. And thinking back to other government operations (and again, I’m not saying that’s what TikTok is), if we look for example at ToTok, the goal there was just mass surveillance aimed at gathering tons of information. If you have that, then, in aggregate, you can start making interesting connections. You see who’s talking to whom; there’s going to be some people of interest that you have a priori knowledge of, and then as you go after that specific individual you have all this aggregate data you can now start to use for tracking and finding other links. And while average individuals may not be of interest to a government, if they’re talking to someone who the government is interested in, then maybe an individual joins that sphere of interest. What advertisers or governments will do is collect as much data as possible and then start mining that data for advertising purposes, or just hang onto it, so that if down the road someone becomes “interesting”, then they have all this past data to crunch. While ordinary citizens may not perceive TikTok as a threat, high-ranking officials in the U.S. government have signaled that they see the app differently. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that the government is considering a ban on TikTok, citing worries that Beijing may be using it as a surveillance and propaganda tool. Yet the government has often ignored highly publicized cases of U.S. tech companies infringing on their users’ privacy (often in ways that seem far more intrusive than anything TikTok has done). This raises the question about whether or not Pompeo and other politicians are seriously concerned about TikTok as a security threat, or if they’re simply targeting the app to score political points with their base. Wardle offers a balanced perspective on the issue: PW: I think it’s largely a political talking point. Our current administration is rather anti- China, so this fits very well into their messaging and what they’re telling their supporters. When our government talks about TikTok and the Chinese government, I don’t think there has been anything tying the app directly to Beijing. But if there was, then that would be a problem: Facebook is probably collecting the same amount of information, but at least in the United States there are legal protections afforded to companies where the government can’t just show up and grab the data. Basically, if you’re working at an intelligence agency or in the military, maybe don’t install TikTok on your phone, because there is a possibility that your information might be useful in the wrong hands. I think that’s probably right for those individuals, and that probably goes for any apps that are developed in foreign countries. It’s just good policy, if you’re a person who’s handling classified information or has a job that’s tied to national security interests, to be careful what you put on your phone! But the average American teenager? I don’t see any security risk per se. TikTok, for its part, is not simply hunkering down and attempting to ride out the storm. The app’s parent company, ByteDance, has appointed a former Disney streaming executive and American citizen, Kevin Mayer, as its new COO, and has also named him CEO of TikTok. Wardle sees this as part of a PR strategy aimed at assuaging the fears of the American public, and perhaps the government as well — a strategy which may be necessary for the TikTok’s survival: PW: I think this is purely a business move. TikTok’s biggest issue right now is this “China connection”, where Americans are kind of freaking out that the app is owned by a Chinese company. So what they’re trying to do is distance themselves as much as possible from that. Hiring a well-known business exec from the United States is kind of a step in this direction. I think they’ve taken other steps as well, for example, they store data on servers outside of China. They’re going to do everything they can to be transparent and do this PR campaign that distances them from China as much as possible. Especially because there are people in the U.S. government threatening to ban, or at least