You know According to the report of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, TikTok is not worse than Facebook in data security or privacy
TikTok has around 700 million active users from all over the world and it is estimate that the number of users will reach up to a billion this year. TikTok has gained much popularity in the past few years where people can share every type of video including education, health tips, sports, etc. However, TikTok has to face many restrictions and this app is now banned in India and Pakistan over its content moderation practices and even the Trump administration put major allegations on this app that it has leaked the privacy of the citizens of America to Chinese Government. TikTok denied all the allegations. Even though the Trump administration banned this app in the country and latterly, in the month of December, a federal judge removed the ban and the attorney of the Trump administration filed an appeal after a month to put a ban on this app again.
However, according to a report issued by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, TikTok and its other Chinese counterpart Douyin is no more threatening than other social media platforms like Facebook because there is still no evidence found that TikTok is gathering the data of its users without their permission. In China, the developers of the app are responsible for the type of content hosted on the platform causing them to filter more aggressively in line with the rules of the government including those that restrict free speech. The separate version of the app which TikTok has made named Douyin makes sense that it will comply with the individual country regulations.
The study found that neither Douyin nor TikTok showed any malware-like behavior. Even Douyin has dynamic code loading and server-side search censorship, however, TikTok does not have the same features but both these apps have the source code which prevents the spread of hate speech, suicide-related content, and even private and delicate information.
In the month of February, the administration of Biden canceled the campaigns that were forcing the Chinese firm ByteDance to sell TikTok. If we compare TikTok with Facebook, there are millions of content on Facebook for misinformation, hate speech, and even child abuse cases that are reported on Facebook are more than any other platform, it is also reported that Facebook shares the most data with third parties.
In TikTok, the end result of modifying the common code base appears to make a product that mostly follows the international industry standards as the study did not found any evidence regarding any undesirable features like Douyin has, also it does not have any strong deviation of privacy and security when compared to Facebook and other social media platforms. However, not finding the evidence of security concerns does not mean that they are none but they are less than Facebook.
