Risky TikTok

TV journalist Joseph Morong revealed this week an interesting censorship tale involving the hugely popular but highly controversial Chinese-owned video-sharing application TikTok.

A chagrined Morong in a Facebook post said he uploaded a video to TikTok about his first-hand experiences and insights about the West Philippine Sea (WPS) tensions only to find out his video’s audio tracks were deliberately muted by TikTok, rendering his efforts useless.

While Morong didn’t accuse TikTok of censorship, his complaint highlights TikTok’s broad influence not only in the ongoing information and misinformation wars regarding the WPS tensions but also raised TikTok’s potential risks to the country’s national security.

In fact, Morong’s complaint came at the heels of a proposed law to ban TikTok in the country.

Congressman Bienvenido Abante recently filed the bill “An Act Regulating Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications” which would empower the president to identify countries that are “foreign adversaries of the Philippines” and impose a ban on digital applications that such adversaries could use to “infiltrate” and threaten national security.

Explaining the bill, Abante said “lawmakers and regulators in the West have increasingly expressed concern that TikTok and its (Beijing-based) parent company ByteDance may put sensitive user data, like location information, into the hands of the Chinese government… China could therefore use TikTok’s content recommendations to fuel misinformation…”

The “ban TikTok” bill has since generated serious debates as it complicates national security and freedom of speech.

Sorting out the bill’s national security implications will take time. But sorting out what to do now with TikTok is politically necessary.

Necessary since Tiktok, reports the South China Morning Post, has “an estimated 49 million (Filipino) users as of January, according to data from German data-gathering platform Statista, or about 43 percent of the country’s estimated population as of end-2023.”

Many prominent politicians also have official TikTok accounts, including President Marcos Jr., who has 1.6 million followers.

TikTok’s massive influence gave us pause. But eventually made us realize there is need to immediately manage whatever national security risks TikTok has raised.

Security experts say TikTok’s has three national security dangers. The first is that TikTok is part of a nefarious Chinese government influence operation designed to sway Philippine politics. The second is that TikTok can be used to collect personal data on Filipinos. The third is that voluntarily downloading TikTok onto phones or devices allows for the injection of malicious software by China.

Of these dangers, many Filipinos seem unaware of TikTok’s collection of personal data deposited in China nor of the risks involved in its collection. But the dangers are real.

Retired Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio, for instance, told a news outfit that “under Chinese law, all Chinese citizens and companies are required to turn over to the Chinese government upon request any data in their possession, including data of third parties in their possession.

TikTok will have to turn over to (Beijing) the private data of Filipino TikTok users.”

Turning over Filipino data to the Chinese government “will violate the Philippine Data Privacy Law, which requires the consent of the users before their private data can be released,” added Carpio, who supports the “ban TikTok” bill.

Despite Morong’s experience, there is as yet no strong evidence linking TikTok to any untoward Chinese influence operations.

But things can rapidly change if China decides to aggressively counter the Marcos government’s determined strategic push to convince the world that the stability of the South China Sea is no longer just a regional issue, but a global issue.

President Marcos Jr. asserted this strategic push in his keynote speech at the recently-concluded 21-st Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. The push is riling China no end as China believes the move will cost her worldwide reputation.

This is readily seen when China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning, in recently criticizing President Marcos’s speech, accused the country of spreading “disinformation to vilify China and mislead the international perception on this matter.”