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- TikTok has very much become a way
for the young generation
to express ourselves in every way.
You can be yourself, you're at home, you're filming,
and there's always gonna be like millions
of people watching you.
I like this one. Look and see.
You never know when you could blow up.
- I think every young kid's dream
is to be successful online.
The Chinese social media platform,
TikTok, has changed the internet.
It's become the most popular app in the world.
- It's fishing videos, it's cooking.
You can make skits, singing, dancing.
Literally everything you can think of, TikTok have.
- It's not an app on their phone anymore.
It's their livelihood.
It's how they communicate with their friends.
It's how they see their world.
That's a part that I don't think everybody
has adjusted to yet.
- We're really at risk of having generations of young people
that performed identities in response to something
that a technology platform prescribes to be the new normal.
Behind the shiny dance videos,
the platform is leading people down dangerous paths.
- I'd like to think that I wouldn't have struggled
with an eating disorder if I hadn't downloaded TikTok.
- My claim with TikTok
is that they are harvesting huge amounts of data illegally
without the consent of children or their parents.
- If you just look at TikTok in isolation,
it seems innocuous.
But it's really takes place in this much larger context
of data collection, artificial intelligence,
and a real effort by the Chinese
to consolidate influence in the region and across the globe.
- Tonight on four corners, TikTok.
In a joint investigation with Hack on Triple J,
we're going down the rabbit hole
to reveal the dark side of app.
How the platform censors political content
and harvests children's data.
And how the app's powerful algorithm exposes people
to misinformation and dangerous content.
- Hi, my name is Rory Eliza.
And, then what?
And what do you do?
- I am a full-time TikToker.
So in the morning I'll wake up,
maybe eight o'clock, nine o'clock.
I'll check my phone,
check if my videos have done well,
or how my followers are reacting
to the content that I've just posted.
TikTok honestly, I get so much love on there.
It's so weird because that's my biggest platform,
is TikTok with 5 million followers.
It's crazy to think that 5 million people,
that's people, it's not just the number.
And if you really think about it's 5 million people
that have tapped that follow button.
They're all just so friendly and
they're kind of like your family.
It's just weird, like you don't know these people,
but they know so much about you
that they treat you like a family member.
And on that note, welcome to the new Rory Eliza.
Rory Eliza is one of millions
of young Australians recording virtually every moment
of their lives to get famous on TikTok.
- Get ready with me for a date.
Yo, I chose an outfit, let's go.
Transition, yeah.
So I think every young kid's dream
is to, you know, be successful online.
So, I think there's definitely a group
where they all wanna be influencers
'cause it's kind of like the in thing now.
And I think that's because of TikTok.
TikTok has been downloaded
more than 3 billion times around the world.
It's become a cultural phenomenon.
I'm 21 and just
learned how to do my own laundry.
Some tomatoes and some cheese.
Dude, no you're gotta go late like, hey.
Oh, okay, okay. Okay.
Everything is about going viral.
The dance, started by someone
in their living room and uploaded to TikTok,
can turn into a stadium full of people,
performing it in unison.
- I like how creative you can be on it.
Like it's just so fun to go on that app
and just express your real self.
Rory started posting comedic skits on TikTok
and her following snowballed.
- No worries. I'll scan that one right through for you right now.
This was her first viral video.
It got nearly 14 million views.
- How about some Peking duck?
Oh yeah, but we actually don't have the Peking duck.
But we've got this sneaking goose.
What an odd name.
It is pretty normal for a book.
In 2019, Rory decided to leave school
to become a full time TikToker.
- Wait, wait, is this a library?
School was just one of those things. I just was not good at.
I decided to leave school when I was in year 11
and I was never there, you know.
I was always in Sydney doing meetings
or presentations for TikTok ends.
I just wasn't there. And when I would come to school,
I would have no idea what we're doing.
'Cause you know, I've been away for heaps of days.
No worries at all. Thanks for coming to our library.
School, you can go back and do it at TAFE.
You can go back any time and do it if you need it.
But you may never get this opportunity again.
So, we just thought it was worth leaving school
and pursuing all the business opportunities
while they were there for her.
- No worries at all. Thanks for coming to our library.
- How do you feel about the fact that 5 million people are
watching her content?
- It's incredible. It's even, when she
goes live, there was a time she went live
and she had 22,000 people watching her in her room.
And I just sort of, in my mind, goes back
to Elton John concert here.
And she had more people watching her.
Than we had at that Elton John concert.
And it kind of way out that's happening
in my daughter's bedroom at the moment.
It was a bit yeah, different.
- Big fashion and cosmetic brands
started noticing Rory success on TikTok
and wanted to tap into a growing audience.
Companies sponsor influences like Rory.
And businesses pay TikTok to advertise on the platform.
This is central to the app's lucrative business model.
- In this work industry being an influencer,
you have to present yourself as a brand, you know.
We aren't really people anymore, we're brands.
We're selling products for brands.
So, you kind of gotta look the part.
The money involved it's enough to live off.
So, it's a pretty fair amount.
I'm about in the medium to high range
of incomes in Australia.
So yeah. Very, very descent.
- Well, it's hard not to even be jealous sometimes
'cause you look at our life and you know,
we get up and we go to work and we come home.
And she can earn money
that can take us days to earn in minutes.
- I found myself driving and just crying,
having like a total breakdown.
And I found myself having
some really quite nasty thoughts and-
- Rory shares her life with 5 million people.
Even her lowest moments.
- Why am I meant to be on this earth.
Like, why does no one like me?
Why do I have no friends?
But most days she feels very alone.
- Okay. That's an old name for,
Being away from people, it's definitely lonely, you know.
I film, oh, four videos a day.
That's a good three hours outta my day.
And then I've got another eight hours
and I'm like, what the heck am I gonna do
for the rest of the day? Like I can't ring out my friends.
Like, y'all, want to hang out? 'Cause they're at work.
So it definitely gets lonely at times.
And you know, sometimes if you're reading
the hate comments and the stress load,
it can be so much for your body
and you're just overwhelmed and you're lonely.
So that can also creep into depression.
- Catherine hasn't had a question.
I'm happy to return to you but let's just keep it civil.
Andrew?
Catherine.
With people stuck at home during lockdown,
desperate for entertainment.
TikTok became the world's most downloaded app in 2020.
And it's continued to hold that title this year.
- TikTok in Australia has seen the same kind of bump
in 2020 as elsewhere in the world.
In October of 2020, there were
an estimated 2.5 million users on TikTok.
Which was about a 50% growth from earlier on in the year.
Of the popular social media apps,
TikTok is the most addictive.
Late TikTok advertising data shows users spend
an average of an hour and a half on the app each day.
- You know it's like 8:00 PM and I'm watching and watching
and then I look up at my clock and it's 2:00 AM.
And I'm like, where the heck did those hours go?
It's cause this, um, "For You" page is so addictive.
It's just so spot on.
TikTok's algorithm is its most valuable asset.
It's designed to determine your interests
and send you personalized content
to keep you on the app for as long as possible.
- I went and saw my mama.
And I went and got my hair done, as well just to-
- TikTok works by recommending content to you
through your activity on the app.
So the more that you scroll through the app,
the better the recommendations are tailored
to your specific interests.
Rather than selecting content that you want to watch
like you would on YouTube or on Netflix.
You primarily access content through one main feed,
which is called the For You page on TikTok.
Which is essentially just an endlessly scrolling,
algorithmically curated feed of videos
that refreshes each time you open the app.
As soon as you sign up to TikTok,
the app starts collecting data
about you, your location, gender, and age,
and also your facial data to figure out who you are
and what kind of videos you want to see.
- Your face is a form of biometric information.
And your face can be analyzed to distinguish a range
of personality and demographic traits.
TikTok collects your facial data
every time you make a video or use a filter on the app.
And can even access photos and videos saved on your phone
that aren't being used on the platform.
To understand how an app like TikTok interprets that data
scientists in Melbourne have developed
what's called a biometric mirror.
- So biometric mirror for instance,
is trained by way of artificial intelligence
to distinguish how intelligent you are,
how attractive, how weird, how responsible
and how emotionally unstable you are.
The interesting thing there is of course,
is that biometric mirror bases it's assumptions
on a single snapshot of your face.
So all of these assumptions are generated based
on the exact appearance of your face
at that exact microsecond that the photo has been taken.
The TikTok algorithm might read your face
and think that you are dealing
with a significant mental health challenge.
You might be presented with videos
that are created by users with-going through
a similar challenge at that time.
And it might really create a very colored worldview for you
where it's really hard to deal
with your mental health challenge at that time.
Lauren Hemings is studying to be a midwife.
She used to spend her uni breaks,
scrolling through TikTok.
- I think it was quarantine boredom
that kind of motivated me to download it.
It was quite an innocent hope
of just getting a good laugh, really.
You know, like getting funny videos
and seeing what was on it.
I never had the intention
of making TikToks or sharing them.
It was more just kind of from the viewpoint of a viewer.
Lauren started following
a popular fitness influencer on the app.
- There's one woman who had like quite a similar body type
to me and she'd expressed that she was unhappy
with that body type.
And she had started tracking calories over quarantine.
She had lost a really, really significant amount of weight.
The algorithm then flooded her feed
with content promoting unhealthy weight loss.
- I was no longer saying funny dance videos or anything.
It was just like this complete focus
on that like fitness and healthy lifestyle goal.
- TikTok pushed Lauren toward the popular trend
of meticulously tracking how many calories you eat in a day.
Something researches, warn, promotes disordered eating.
The hashtag, What I eat in a day,
has more than 7 billion views on TikTok.
- It turned into like this obsession
and I felt that I could not eat anything
without knowing how many calories it contained
and without meeting, you know, my target number
of calories throughout the day.
There was a few months where I didn't put anything
into my mouth that I had not weighed.
Four months after downloading TikTok,
Lauren admitted to her friends and family
she had an eating disorder.
- I'd like to think that I wouldn't have struggled
with an eating disorder if I hadn't downloaded TikTok.
I think, you know, TikTok
was the main contributor to the development of that.
Young users are increasingly turning to TikTok
to find and spread information on how to restrict food
and hide their disordered, eating from their families.
- What they do is they actually share content
of what they go through and what they have done for the day
in the fascination to become thin.
So they would share recipes.
They would share diet plans.
They would share how you need to be disciplined.
For someone who's vulnerable and desperate,
they would follow anyone's advice.
None of this advice is actually good
because some of these advice is, oh lick a pumpkin
for your lunch, but don't eat.
Drink a liter of water and you should be fine.
- I was super hesitant to get on TikTok
because I'd heard that it was a really bad space
for people with eating disorders.
Because the algorithm knows everything
and then it would curate your feed
to be interested in that kind of stuff.
Claire Benstead has been in and out of hospital
for anorexia for more than five years.
She decided to download TikTok
to find support and to promote her earrings business.
- You want that support
because it's such an isolating illness.
And there's so many people in my life
that don't get it and don't understand it.
Claire says the TikTok algorithm identified
she had an eating disorder and she noticed
an immediate change to the types of videos on her feed.
- So it went from being, you know,
my algorithm was, you know, Australian humor
and musical theater humor, and all of that kind of stuff
to just being eating disorder content all the time.
And as I got sicker and I got more obsessive,
all I could do was just flick through my phone,
and look at this footage.
I spent hours on it and just fixated on it.
I wasn't recovering it all.
I was actively relapsing.
Claire was admitted to hospital.
As part of her treatment, her psychologists worked with her
to remove the toxic content from her TikTok feed
by unfollowing accounts and reporting videos.
How long did it actually take you to get rid
of that eating disorder content from your algorithm.
Ages.
Pretty much being in hospital, so probably two months,
it took me to change the algorithm.
When you're kind of scrolling through like this-
- Even while Claire was showing me her
cleaned up TikTok feed,
videos about eating disorders began reappearing.
Hey, there we go. Here's one right now.
Just every five or six videos.
And so, I'm in a good spot that this doesn't trigger me.
- So even though you're saying not interested,
it's still coming up? - It's still coming up.
If you report TikTok videos, the company says
its moderators then decide whether to ban them.
Which in turn is supposed
to teach the algorithm to stop featuring them.
- I just say that I'm not interested in that-
- TikToks policies, say the app bans content
promoting, normalizing or glorifying eating disorders.
And you can say that it's offensive,
But when users like Claire,
have reported those videos, they were told
they don't breach any guidelines.
- You would think that, you know, something this serious
and it's got the highest mortality rate
of any mental illness, you would think that,
that would be something that you could report.
Because it is promoting those behaviors
and it's making it worse.
TikTok also says it
bans pro eating disorder hashtags
so users can search for those videos.
And if they try to, a number
for eating disorder support service,
the Butterfly Foundation automatically pops up.
But users find ways around it.
- But the issue is now that it's ever evolving.
Like there's a hashtag now that people
with eating disorders use.
And you would never guess that
it was an eating disorder hashtag.
Like it's after a famous singer.
So just changing them to be completely irrelevant
from what an eating disorder is.
And so it's so hard to escape now.
And I think it's really hard for TikTok
to keep up with that all.
- There are mechanisms in place
to screen some of that content.
But a lot of it is also reliant on human moderation.
And when you consider the amount of videos
and the volume that is being uploaded to TikTok,
it's a very difficult task to imagine
human moderators can catch everything.
Last year, TikTok established a council
of outside experts to advise
the company about content moderation.
David Polgar is one of them.
- As we know with great power comes great responsibility.
There's a lot of power in TikToks algorithm.
Therefore you have to constantly be aware
of how it's impacting other individuals
and other communities.
I think comparatively speaking TikTok
has done a pretty decent job
with being more reflective on rabbit holes
and how that can affect individuals.
But at the same time, you're dealing with human behaviour.
You're dealing with bad actors.
You're dealing with major differences
of how people define appropriate versus inappropriate.
And we have this tricky kind
of balancing act that's constantly happening.
- TikTok's business model is built on creating a fun,
glossy and glamorous version of the world.
And the company has been found to strictly control content
that doesn't fit with that image.
In March last year, TikTok policy documents were leaked.
Showing content moderators were instructed
to suppress posts by creators
considered ugly, poor or disabled.
The documents said, "Videos, including
people who had chubby or obese
with ugly facial looks,
like too many wrinkles or facial deformities
and other disabilities should be excluded."
TikTok has said it no longer engages in these practices.
- I don't want to admit it, but looks
have a lot to do with it.
And you know, we're all secretly a bit vain.
As much you don't wanna admit it,
you go for looks over non-looks, you know.
So I think looks definitely have a lot to do with it.
And if you look at all the really big time influencers,
they're all beautiful.
Like, if you look at all these influencers,
they're all stunning, like nothing wrong with them.
So I think looks definitely have a lot to do with it.
Much of TikTok's popularity
is driven by dance trends,
choreographed by black creators
and then copied by white influencers.
But black content makers say
that the platform actively discriminates against them.
Think it's high time we let black women
on this app also be famous for doing the bare minimum.
Like I should be able to just sit here in silence,
and let y'all look at me
and the next thing you know, I have a million followers.
- Petition for black people for the rest
of April to stop talking.
- There have been instances
of black creator led mass walk offs
from the platform called Blackouts.
Where on a certain day,
black creators will stop using the platform
or urge other creators to leave the platform
because of TikToks inaction and failure to respond to
or engage with some of the criticisms
and the discourse that black creators have raised.
So if the company continues to be reactive and responsive,
rather than proactive and really meaningfully engage,
then these issues are gonna continue to occur.
- Often, it makes me quite furious, I guess,
'cause it's like these black creators,
they got talent, they're out here dancing
and showing what they're capable of.
So it's kind of very much disappointing
and hard on us when we're out here expected
to have all of these in order to get the views
in order to get the likes and shares.
But no matter how much we try,
we're just not gonna get that.
- Unice Wani is an 18 year old TikTok creator from Perth.
- I like this one. Look and see.
I feel like the more I go viral,
the more I can basically show the younger generation
and show more colored girls, I guess,
or people out there like I'm okay in my own skin
and I love myself the way I am.
I don't care what social media says about me.
What people on the other side of the screen says about me.
You can be yourself at the end of the day.
Let me quickly address this-
- As her following grew,
so did the hateful comments.
And she decided to confront the issue on the app.
- So a majority of you guys still feel the need
to comment about my skin color and about how dark I am
and about how black, black, black, black, black I am.
Well, guess what?
I'm black and I'm so proud.
- Unice says often her videos are hidden
or muted from the TikTok feed.
Meaning few people see them.
A practice known as Shadow Banning.
- Are you pressed?
Are you mad?
Are you upset?
Are you sad?
Sorry, what?
I guess you tend to get a lot of shadow bans
for speaking up about stuff such as racism.
Stuff you couldn't mention.
One word, black, could say all of this
and your video could get shadow banned.
When you post a video, the video, just it's on the app.
It's just, you're not gonna get any views for it.
So you can see it. It's just other people can't see it
when they go onto your account as well.
So it's up there. It's just, it's not going to get any views.
Last year TikTok creators noticed
the algorithm was suppressing posts
with the hashtag Black Lives Matter or George Floyd.
- So word on the street is that TikTok has banned
the Black Lives Matter hashtag.
One of those creators was Sydney man,
Paniora Nukunuku, who had created
a video using a pool table
to explain the Black Lives Matter issue to Australians.
- This is a white Australia table.
And they pretty much had 200 years head-start
and they had established everything in the country.
So their break looks like this.
Bro, can you get home ownership in business?
Beautiful.
That was spicy.
That blew up bigger than I thought it would.
I just need to put this here.
Boy, what the,
- Don't worry. It's trauma, injustice and discrimination.
But I said, sorry, so it should be fine.
So just go for it, bro.
It was the biggest video at the time that I've done.
I think you're just being lazy, hey.
I don't know why.
Oh, I do know why, because it was good.
I shouldn't look at the camera, but I'm
just really proud right now.
Using these two cue balls,
I'll explain to you, that resulted
in my account getting banned
for like seven days.
I don't know why.
They claimed that my video breached community guidelines,
which is extremely vague because there is no swearing,
there is no explicit language.
There's no nudity or explicit like sexual stuff.
None of that. And my account got banned.
- The Black Lives Matter is trending on TikTok,
which is ironic considering how much time TikTok spends
silencing the voices of black creators.
TikTok apologized for suppressing hashtags,
referring to Black Lives Matter,
blaming a glitch in the algorithm.
- Let's take a moment of silence for this man.
- The company responded with a new initiative
for black creators called the TikTok Black Creator Programme.
I've spoken to creators who had been approached
for that programme, who felt that it was lip service.
It wasn't really a well-meaning effort
to engage with black voices and engage with discourse
that is important to black communities.
Paniora, has more than 180,000 followers on TikTok.
He often posts about living with a disability.
- So growing up with the fake leg,
I always got in trouble every time I park
in my disabled spot.
The first video I did, was me going up
to a pool and telling my friends to record me,
dip my fake leg in the water to test the water out.
It was a really dumb idea.
But for some reason, people loved it.
And in this space of eight hours,
it hit about 780,000 views.
If you have this many followers and that many likes,
it's 'cause you're pretty.
If you have this many followers
and the same amount of likes,
you're just funny.
Paniora ran into trouble with the TikTok censors
when he posted a video of a confrontation
with someone who was telling him,
he shouldn't have a disability permit
- So this old lady had the nerve to ask me
if this is my disability card.
This,
I wonder if this is enough.
The video was taken down.
TikTok said it breached the app's community guidelines.
Paniora appealed and it was put back up.
But he's had other videos
about his disability removed as well.
- You don't need to worry about it.
The video got taken down and I didn't even know it
until I looked back at the hashtags
and decided to see which videos that I've done
have like made it to the top and that wasn't there.
I appealed it and I don't know why that was taken down.
Don't ever do that again.
Do I feel like TikTok is being racist?
I don't know.
Has TikTok been hit up in the past,
around the moderators being told
to limit the exposure of disabled people and ugly people?
Yes. They've been called out on that.
Is this happening again?
I hope not, but it definitely feels like it has.
We know that to decolonize Palestine
means also to decolonize-
- I'll probably keep moving, get some shots.
In may of this year,
Paniora posted a video from a pro-Palestine rally.
But TikTok's algorithm flagged it.
And it was instantly taken down.
Other creators posting TikToks about Palestine
have said they've experienced the same thing.
- When TikTok started removing my videos
about the protests in regards
to the Palestinian situation, I was furious.
I was like, why? There is nothing in these videos
that would justify, like a removal.
There really isn't.
- One of the big problems with TikTok
and the unique nature of its opaque algorithm,
is that it's very difficult to understand
or to recognise when censorship is taking place.
People came together to try to-
- So it is possible for content on the app
to be promoted or demoted without anyone knowing.
- I'm so sick and tired of every social media platform
silencing Palestinian voices.
- But we also see evidence of how content moderation
that takes place in China.
How that type of thinking is still applied
to TikTok outside of China.
TikTok is owned by Chinese start-up, ByteDance,
which is believed to be worth more than $250 billion.
It's heavily regulated by the Chinese government.
And there's a Communist Party Internal Committee
in ByteDance, which ensures the parties political goals
are pursued alongside the company's.
- We have to be extra concerned
about how apps like TikTok can be used
as a vector for censorship and surveillance.
- The Australian Strategic Policy Institute
did the first academic investigation
into censorship on TikTok,
concluding the company actively uses the algorithm
to hide political speech it deems controversial.
The research was funded by the US State Department
and found anti-Russian government videos
as well as hashtags about LGBTQI issues
and the mass detention of Uyghurs
were among those being suppressed.
- The company has cooperated with public security bureaus
all throughout China and including in Xinjiang.
And that means that they work,
they coordinate with government agencies
to ensure that the information space in China
is pumped full of this propaganda.
That shows a very rosy picture
of what's happening in Xinjiang.
In 2018, then CEO of ByteDance
was forced to publicly apologise.
Saying one of the company's platforms
had gone against China's core socialist values.
- We have a very clear public statement
from the founder of ByteDance,
that this is something that he's committed to doing
and to ensuring that the company continues
to push this type of propaganda, certainly inside of China.
Whether that is then extended out to the rest of the world
via apps like TikTok, is another question.
And it's something worth watching.
In a statement TikTok said,
it does not moderate or remove content
based on political sensitivities.
And has never content at the request
of the Chinese government.
It also said it embraces diversity
and denied it discriminates against any creator
or community on our platform.
- We've known for a better part of a decade,
both here in the US and in Australia,
about the concerns raised by the prevalence
of Chinese telecommunications companies.
And so then the next question became,
well, what about all these apps that have,
of companies that are headquartered in China?
They're collecting tremendous amounts of user data.
They have access to the devices of individuals.
Jamil Jaffer is Founder
of the National Security Institute in Washington.
And has advised the us government on cyber-security.
- In China, it's all the central government,
the Communist Party.
There's no separation between the branches.
And so, when these apps have all that data,
it's much easier for the Chinese government
to simply obtain access to that data.
- My understanding is that,
about a quarter of the world's population
is a member of TikTok if I'm not mistaken.
So that's obviously an enormous amount of data
that's being generated.
That's being handed over for free
to that single social network
that has pretty much full control
over what it does to the data.
It might analyze it to generate personalized content
for you, but it might also use that data
to offer technology products and services
to other companies moving forward in the future.
- Hello, it's Avani in Sydney.
How's it going?
- Hi.
Anne Longfield is England's
former children's commissioner.
Anne's interview, take one.
- She's representing millions of kids on TikTok
in the UK and Europe in a class action against the company.
- My claim with TikTok at the moment is that,
they are harvesting huge amounts of data illegally
without the consent of children or their parents.
And they aren't giving the right level
of transparency about what happens to that data,
or actually what that data includes.
Almost a third of TikTok's Australian users are under 14.
Lawyers say TikTok takes personal information
like phone numbers, videos, locations, and facial data
from kids without their consent.
As well as the photos and videos recorded using TikTok,
but not uploaded or saved to the platform.
- Given the level of data and the lack of transparency
around there, it's difficult to imagine
that this isn't just a kind of
information gathering service,
which is thinly veiled as some kind of enjoyable platform,
which appeals to young children.
So the real incentive here,
when you look at it in really cold terms,
seems to be, to gather as much data as possible
to really be able to monetize that.
TikTok's already been fined millions of dollars
in the US and South Korea for harvesting children's data.
The company restricted app access for children
and has taken down millions of under-age users' accounts.
There's been no legal action in Australia.
- I think that governments do have a responsibility
to intervene to ensure that children
are protected in whatever kind of environment they're in.
And you see those protections and measures
in terms of the physical environment,
in terms of their safety, you know,
in the communities they live in,
in the environments they are.
But it hasn't always been the case online.
And some governments have
struggled to see what that means.
If the case is successful,
TikTok could have to pay children
from the UK and Europe, billions in compensation.
TikTok is fighting the case.
In a statement, the company said,
"Privacy and safety are top priorities for TikTok
and we have robust policies, processes,
and technologies in place to help protect all users
and our teenage users in particular.
We believe the claims lack merit
and intend to vigorously defend the action."
The US government is reviewing TikTok
and hasn't ruled out a ban.
- The real question you ask is, what
about the national security implications?
So, okay. Yes, a lot of people are using it, right.
But why does that matter?
And it matters, I think, because of the access,
it gives you to this large amount of data.
You never think about the Chinese government in Beijing,
having videos of you in your home,
outside your home, at the park with your kids,
knowing who your kids play with.
I mean, that's what they have now
potentially with this data set.
We've seen now two consecutive presidents
sign executive orders,
making clear that they are very concerned
about the national security implications
of TikTok's data collection.
As well as the impact it has
on the privacy and civil liberties of Americans.
India has announced a ban on TikTok.
And in July last year, Prime Minister Scott Morrison
ordered a review by intelligence agencies into the app.
We are always very mindful of those risks
and we are always monitoring them very closely.
And if we've considered, there is a need
to take further action than we are taking now,
then I can tell you, we won't be shy about it.
- It's certainly a security concern
that the data of Australian users
is potentially going back to Beijing.
TikTok maintained that this is not the case.
And our analysis showed that
there's certainly not a fire hose
of content that's being sent back to Beijing.
But that doesn't mean that,
that content can't be accessed
from Beijing, if that's required.
How are you going?
- I'm good, thank you. How are you?
TikTok maintains Australian users' data
is held on servers in the US and Singapore.
And that it has never provided data
to the Chinese government.
Staff in the Home Affairs and Defense Departments
have been told not to have TikTok on their phones
because of security risks.
But Scott Morrison said there wasn't enough evidence
to ban TikTok in Australia.
- The scope of the investigation did seem
to be quite limited.
And that scope is not really enough to be able
to tell the rest of Australia
and regular Australian citizens,
whether it's a good idea for them to be using the app.
- There should definitely be another more rigorous
and lengthy review into TikTok
to fully understand the risks that TikTok presents.
- And so if you just look at TikTok in isolation,
and say, well, it's just this one app,
and it's just kids doing dancing videos.
It seems innocuous.
But it's really takes place in this much larger context
of data collection, artificial intelligence,
and a real effort by the Chinese to consolidate influence
in the region and across the globe.
In just two years,
TikTok has cemented itself as the app of choice
for millions of Australians.
- So you guys kept telling me to go on the Voice 2021.
So, I did.
There are serious concerns
that TikToks fun and beautiful version of reality
is distorting the way we see the world.
And questions about whether its users understand the risks.
- So we're really at risk of having generations
of young people that haven't been able
to form their own identity in natural ways.
And instead have formed identities
in response to something that a technology
or a technology platform prescribes
to be the normal or the new normal.
- Last time this lady came up to me and go,
you don't look disabled enough.
I don't look disabled enough?
- I understand that TikTok is trying its very best
to make the platform palatable to everyone
by just having fun dance videos and lip sync videos.
But I know that my content gives value
to so many people who look like me.
Who live the same life like me.
Who are brown like me.
- I ended up cutting off TikTok like after a few months.
But even with that, like it still left me
with the eating disorder, you know.
Like, TikTok kind of led to the development and then
it has taken a really, really long time to fix that.
TikTok isn't out here to help people.
I don't think it's coming to the world
with this intention of helping people.
If they're going to make money off of something,
then they will make money off of something.
I think they maybe need to realise
the impact that is having on people.