TagByteDance
China, Cybertheft, and the Ethics of Espionage
All nations spy, but espionage crosses a moral line when it costs normal civilians their jobs.
TikTok is Storing Data in China, Contrary to Former Claims
TikTok CEO said user data isn't stored in China. Turns out it is.Many online creators and entrepreneurs give sensitive data to TikTok, the China-owned social media app, so they can do business on the platform. That includes social security numbers. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew told Congress earlier this year that users’ data was stored outside of China in places such as Virginia and Singapore. Apparently, however, that is an inaccurate claim. According to a report from Forbes, TikTok has indeed been storing sensitive data on Chinese servers, where employees there can access it. Alexandra S. Levine reports, A trove of records obtained by Forbes from multiple sources across different parts of the company reveals that highly sensitive financial and personal information about those prized users and third parties has been stored in China. Read More ›
No More TikTok for State Agencies in Texas
Tenuous US-China relations may prompt other state legislatures to follow in Abbott’s footstepsGovernor Greg Abbott of Texas called for a ban of TikTok from all state agencies this week. Agencies have until February 15th to accommodate to the policy, which entails removing the social media app from all devices used to carry out official Texas-related business. The new ruling will also involve restricting access to TikTok usage on personal devices in potentially “sensitive locations and meetings.” TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, Ltd., has been criticized for mining data from its American users. Since the Chinese government can demand data disclosures from businesses, Gov. Abbott thinks TikTok is an issue of state and national security: TikTok harvests significant amounts of data from a user’s device, including details about a user’s internet Read More ›
Will China’s Huge Tech Sector Crackdown Stifle Innovation?
Part I: How will the Common Prosperity program really play out in the private sector?Didi Chuxing (Didi Global, Inc.), the largest ride-hailing company in the world, was reprimanded when it opened on the New York Stock Exchange after regulators warned it needed to shore up its data security issues. Meituan, China’s massive shopping and coupon app, was recently fined $533 million for “anticompetitive behavior.” Alibaba, owned by tech billionaire Jack Ma, had to pay a $2.8 billion fine for the same reasons. Antitrust regulators dinged Tencent, Baidu (China’s Google alternative), ByteDance (parent company for TikTok), and ecommerce company JD.com Inc. The billion-dollar online private tutoring industry sank after the Chinese government declared that after-school tutoring is now non-profit only. Then the online gaming industry was hit when the Chinese government declared children are only allowed to play for a few Read More ›
China Sharply Reins in Big Tech Amid All-Digital Currency Rollout
Ant Group must turn over its vast customer database to the government in exchange for the easing of strict regulationsEarlier, we looked at what China’s new digital yuan, also called Digital Currency Electronics Payment or e-CNY, will mean for Chinese citizens. The rollout may relate to billionaire e-commerce founder Jack Ma’s critiques of China’s regulators and subsequent (temporary) disappearance. Also to the subsequent denial of his Ant Group’s billion-dollar initial public offering on the Shanghai index. Since then, the Chinese government has cracked down on several Big Tech companies while promoting the digital yuan. How China is rapidly reining in its Big Tech industries Chinese media have been promoting the second annual Double Five (i.e., May 5) Shopping Festival in Shanghai. This month-long state-organized shopping festival is part of “National Consumption Promotion Month.” The first Consumption Month festival, held Read More ›
Why Some Nation States Are Banning TikTok
The United States is not alone in questioning the social medium’s allegiance to the Chinese governmentWhy is TikTok so controversial? It’s the first Chinese technology company that has reached a billion users outside of China. Its main demographic is Generation Z—teens and twenty-somethings. If you take a look at TikTok videos, most are goofy and irreverent. They’re frenetic shorts of everything from fashion tips to pranks and, of course, (bad) dancing. TikTok’s stated mission is to “inspire creativity and bring joy.” What could go wrong? Here’s what. Working with China, as Disney and the NBA can attest, comes with certain strings attached, including acquiescing to the Chinese Communist Party’s rules for acceptable speech. Because ByteDance, which owns TikTok, is a Chinese company (although partly owned by investors from the U.S. and Japan), the Chinese Communist Read More ›