For the sake of the kids, it’s time we delete TikTok

Earlier this year Beijing claimed it does not ask companies to hand over data gathered overseas, as the Chinese-owned TikTok faces mounting pressure and calls for a ban in the US.

Last week, The Guardian unceremoniously deleted Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America” after its contents had gone viral on ­TikTok.

Youngsters in the US recorded videos of themselves reading and responding to the terrorist leader’s letter (which justifies the killing of innocent American civilians) with statements such as “he was right” and “I will never look at life the same again”.

After the viral trend hit the press, TikTok made moves to shut it down. It was too late. The hundreds of videos praising bin Laden were viewed more than 14 million times.

To put that into perspective, when Facebook was censured for allowing the Russian “Internet Research Agency” to buy ads in the lead-up to the 2016 US election, those ads were viewed 10 million times. This was enough to spark widespread belief that Russia had successfully meddled in the 2016 election.

TikTok’s trends become viral more rapidly than those on any other social media platform, in part because it is the most popular app among teenagers. With an average daily usage of 95 minutes, TikTok serves as the sole news source for millions of its users.

Everyone knows social media can be toxic, but the virality of bin Laden’s letter shows just how easily these platforms can be used to spread anti-Western propaganda, and just how easy it is to convince vast swathes of young people that terrorism can be justified.

This depressing reality has been thrown into stark relief after the Hamas massacre of October 7. A survey in the US of 2116 registered voters found that on the Israel-Hamas conflict there exists a troubling generational divide.

When asked the question: “Do you think the Hamas killing of 1200 Israeli civilians in Israel can be justified by the grievances of Palestinians?”, a majority of those aged between the ages of 18 and 24 answered “yes”.

Our education system is partly to blame. In universities, young people are taught that humanity can be divided into neat groups defined by moral status.

On one side are those who are “oppressed”, who have the highest moral status, and on the other side are those who are the “oppressors”, who have none. Once a group of people is categorised as “oppressed” anything its members do is considered justifiable. Once a group is categorised as an “oppressor” any violence against it becomes legitimate.

Osama bin Laden

Western education has a lot to answer for. But these pernicious ideologies once stayed inside the insular walls of university campuses. Only a minority of young people study gender studies, cultural studies or one of the other “studies” disciplines that promotes the Manichean worldview. The fact that this harmful and simple-minded ideology has spread out into the mainstream is largely the fault of social media.

Pro-Hamas content masquerading as “social justice” has exploded on Instagram since October 7.

US-based graphic designer Christina Buttons has catalogued dozens of posts on Instagram conflating the Palestinian cause with modern-day social justice concerns relevant to American teenagers.

Such posts consist of mind-numbing slogans as “Palestine is a Feminist Issue”, “Palestine Liberation is About Reproductive Justice”, “Free Palestine is a Feminist Issue … it’s a reproductive rights issue, it’s an Indigenous rights issue, it’s a climate justice issue, it’s a queer rights issue, it’s an abolitionist issue”.

Yet the absurd soon transforms to the sinister with posts declaring “Zionism is the New Nazism”, “Zionism is white supremacy” and “Zionism is a disease that humanity has to be cured of”.

Instagram is bad enough. But TikTok may be worse. It is well known that ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, is connected to the Chinese Communist Party. It is also well known that TikTok poses significant privacy risks, and is capable of collecting all sorts of data about its users that other internet companies do not collect. Such data include real-time geographic location and biometric data such as faceprints and voiceprints.

In a letter to Liberal Senator James Paterson last year, TikTok was forced to admit staff in mainland China can access data on Australian users. Under Chinese law, any company within China must share data with the government if requested, therefore any data collected by TikTok may end up in the CCP’s hands.

Donald Trump sought to ban the platform in the US in 2020, issuing an executive order demanding the platform be sold by its Chinese-owned parent company. But the executive order had a preliminary injunction made against it by a District Court, and when Joe Biden came to office the order was overturned.

And it’s not just Trump who is worried about the platform. In Germany, the chief executive of Axel Springer, a German publishing behemoth, has described TikTok as a “tool of espionage”. Scott Galloway, an American author, podcaster, and professor of marketing at NYU, has said: “If you believe as I do that there is no separation between the CCP and a Chinese company, who can ‘disappear’ a CEO for four weeks; if you believe the CCP has a vested interest in diminishing our standing globally, and then you also acknowledge that people under the age of 18 are spending more time on TikTok than they’re spending on every streaming network combined, are we comfortable – are we down with an organisation that wants to undermine America – controlling the media our children see?”

James Paterson

Leaders in countries around the world have come to similar conclusions and have acted accordingly. Nepal recently banned the platform, declaring it was “detrimental to social harmony”. India has banned TikTok, WeChat and dozens of other Chinese apps, because they are “prejudicial to sovereignty”. And the US state of Montana recently banned the platform, its Republican Governor citing “our shared priority to protect Montanans from Chinese Communist Party surveillance”.

In light of the evidence of privacy risk, and in the context of fraying social harmony, Australian politicians have the opportunity to achieve an easy win. The curtailment of TikTok in Australia will be welcomed by almost all parents of teenagers who watch as their children waste precious hours hypnotised by their screens.

It will be welcomed by teachers who complain that their students can no longer focus in the classroom. And it may even be welcomed by a generation of young people who know their use of social media is counter-productive, but are simply unable to stop.

Claire Lehmann is founding editor of online magazine Quillette.