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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

Australia isn’t the first country to ban TikTok from government devices.

In fact, all of our closest allies have already taken steps to keep the app away from government secrets.

So how justified are these fears? Is the next step a forced-sale? Or even a total ban?

Today, associate editor of The Saturday Paper Martin Mckenzie Murray, on how the company behind TikTok learned to walk the party line.

It’s Wednesday, April 12.

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RUBY:

So, Marty, a few days ago, the Australian Government announced that the app, TikTok, would be banned on government devices. Can we begin by talking a bit about TikTok, which is incredibly popular - It's the world's most downloaded app - and the way that it's used in Australia. What would you say the appeal of TikTok is?

MARTY:

Well, it's highly addictive, for one Ruby, like most social media. Its popularity is almost unparalleled. Cloudflare, a web and tech security firm that also does kind of Internet surveys, had it as the world's most popular website last year. It now has over a billion users. It hit the 1 billion threshold last year and this has all happened relatively quickly, within four or five years. It hosts short videos and it doesn't require a network like Facebook would, for instance, so your network or community of peers and friends that share content. Here, an algorithm will determine your tastes.

Archival tape – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

“Hey everyone this is rep AOC - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - and this is my first TikTok.”

MARTY:

So it will look at what you use and then curate this literally endless stream of videos.

Archival tape – TikTok User 1:

“I am a moron of simply indescribable proportions. Hello shaggers, it’s Throb the Builder…”

Archival tape – TikTok User 2:

“This salad is literally the reason I married my husband. I wish I was joking but I’m not, it’s really that good. And you’re going to use this as a chance to practice your chopping skills…”

Archival tape – [Cat meowing]

MARTY:

It's also addictive in that manner. It's also addictive in that it kind of dangles the prospect of viral stardom, something that can be financially leverage-able. And so while the odds of you earning an independent wage through your TikTok videos is very slim, there are kind of these conspicuous stories of teenagers becoming quite wealthy through the popularity of their videos.

RUBY:

And so when the Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus, announced that TikTok would be banned from government phones - what did he say about why that was?

MARTY:

Well, it's interesting. There are a number of reasons, but Mark Dreyfus, the Attorney-General's statement announcing this ban of TikTok on government issued phones was actually really short and kind of shy of detail.

Archival tape – Mark Dreyfus:

“We've been considering advice from our security agencies. A range of countries around the world have taken steps in relation to government devices.”

MARTY:

There was a certain kind of diplomatic delicacy here, so China wasn't mentioned by name. The threats themselves weren't specified.

Archival tape – Mark Dreyfus:

“I don’t see this in terms of messaging. I see this in terms of taking decisions that are in Australia's best interests…”

MARTY:

And TikTok, through its general manager for Australian operations, Lee Hunter, spoke to the ABC and said that the company was disappointed, and that the Australian Government's decision was based on politics and not facts.

Archival tape – Lee Hunter:

“There's zero evidence to suggest that we're in any way a national security risk. I think what's happened…”

Archival tape – Patricia Karvelas:

“That wasn't the question, with respect. I didn't ask if you were a national security risk. I said that the data, as they describe it, can be put at risk, their data.”

Archival tape – Lee Hunter:

“No, there is no evidence to support that at all. And I think what's happening here is we're getting caught up in wider geopolitical issues.”

RUBY:

Right, so TikTok says data is not shared with the Chinese government; but that has to be the concern that’s behind this ban, even if the Australian government isn’t coming out and directly making that allegation. So what do we know for sure, then, about TikTok’s use of data?

MARTY:

So as ASPI, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which the government founded, it's partially funded by the Defence Department. As they pointed out in their submission to a senate select committee that is looking into foreign interference via social media, there's not much space between these putatively private Chinese tech companies and the Chinese Communist Party. They're not state owned entities, but they are effectively state controlled. And that's because China's national security laws are so vast and so powerful that it can render any, quote unquote, private data, the states. So the Chinese government can demand data. And also under their national security laws, if you're subject to handing over personal data, you're prevented, from law, about speaking about that publicly. So one of the threats is that kind of proximity or the leverage that the CCP hold over TikTok. Another threat is the use of TikTok to promulgate Chinese propaganda. And this can be done very easily, subtly. So TikTok has a different version in China called Douyin, and your experience of that as a Chinese user to a Western user would be very different. China are enthusiastic censors, and so if you try getting information on Tiananmen Square, for instance, you would struggle. So one of the fears is China's use of this to disseminate or broadcast their propaganda.

RUBY:

And so I suppose really the question of whether TikTok is a security risk to government workers in Australia really just goes back to what the company's relationship to the Chinese Communist Party really is and how close that relationship is. If we look to how TikTok was formed, who was behind it and what the original intent of the app is, what can we learn about that relationship?

MARTY:

Yeah, so a significant figure here is Zhang Yiming, who's the co-founder of Bytedance in 2012. He became one of China's wealthiest men, well before the age of 40. Initially, the enormous, you know, I think unparalleled success and popularity of TikTok kind of rested upon the acquisition of another Chinese app called Musical.ly, which allowed users to create lip synching videos. This app was really popular with young Americans. After they acquired that, they developed TikTok in 2016 and they started sort of transitioning or shepherding all of these American users to the new app, and this was a coup.

But something that I should point out is that 2018, Zhang YiMing found himself in some pretty hot water over a couple of different Bytedance apps, one that facilitated the sharing of humorous memes, another one that was a news aggregator. It attracted the gaze of the Chinese media regulator.

And it argued that, especially the meme sharing app, was vulgar, it was an affront to Chinese culture and ideology and socialist values, and it demanded from Zhang Yiming his debasement. It forced from him a kind of groveling apology for bringing the country into disrepute and for breaching, specifically, the four consciousnesses. This was a kind of high minded slogan, which in effect kind of asks for uniformity and great deference to Xi Jinping. So Zhang Yiming offered this apology and the Chinese Communist Party shut that app down. And I think this is a reminder of what ASPI was saying, is that there's not much space between these putatively private tech companies and the Chinese Communist Party.

RUBY:

Right. So even as TikTok is launching, its founder is clearly becoming aware of how the Chinese government would respond to any content that it didn't think was appropriate. So presumably the company has that in mind as TikTok becomes more and more popular. So what do we know about the relationship between the people who run TikTok now and the Chinese government? How close is it?

MARTY:

Well, very close. So, so close that in 2021, the Chinese government quietly bought a stake in Bytedance and the Chinese Communist Party have several representatives on its board. This was done quite quietly.

So when ASPI makes the argument, it's a substantial one, that Bytedance might not be state owned, but it's certainly state controlled.

RUBY:

Right so it’s for those reasons that the Australian government has moved to ban TikTok on government devices. But are there signs, Marty, that that ban could go further, that it could be extended?

MARTY:

So Australia is far from the first country to impose such a ban. In fact, we were the last of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance to do so. The United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand have all imposed this same prohibition that is banning TikTok from government issued devices, whether they be ipads, iphones. And in America, where such a ban has been in place for a while, they're now debating, quite ferociously, a total prohibition on the app.

RUBY:

We’ll be back in a moment.

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RUBY:

Marty, Australia isn't the only or the first country to enact a partial TikTok ban. We’re really following the lead of other countries like the US and Britain. Can we talk a bit more about what's happening in the US, because there has been talk of a total ban of TikTok there. Why is that?

MARTY:

Yeah, this ban did seem inevitable and in America, it's more intense. Donald Trump kind of went to war against TikTok and tried to ban the app entirely. So not the qualified prohibition that has occurred at the moment, banning it from government phones, but a total prohibition as exists in India. Towards the end of Trump's term, he issued an executive order banning TikTok. It faced several court injunctions and was never imposed, and Biden actually unwound that. But fast forward 18 months or so, Biden's under renewed pressure to exercise a total prohibition such as Trump had slated. And one aggravating feature is the discovery that TikTok was spying on US journalists. In December last year, TikTok executives, after a long time of denying it, confessed that they had used the app to spy upon US journalists.

Bytedance, the company that owns TikTok, were fearful that some staff were leaking sensitive corporate information to US journalists, and so several TikTok staff had a short list, compiled a short list of people that they suspected might be the leakers, and they cross-referenced their locations with the journalists that were writing these stories. So they confessed to this in December. But the defense was that it was just a few rogue actors who have since been fired.

Archival tape – Congress member 1:

“The committee will come to order. Before I begin I’d like to take a moment to address the guests in the audience. First of all, thank you for coming.”

MARTY:

So late last year, the House Energy and Commerce Committee began congressional hearings about the broader issue of regulating social media. And TikTok executives, Shou Chew was one, faced a barrage of questions from congressional leaders.

RUBY:

So tell me more about those hearings. What kind of questions were TikTok executives subject to? And how did they defend the company?

Archival tape – Congress member 2:

“Our witness today is Mr. Shou Chew, Chief Executive Officer of TikTok. You’re recognised for five minutes.”

Archival tape – Shou Chew:

“Thank you.”

MARTY:

So you have congressional, often men, who don't quite understand the technology that they're meant to be kind of prosecuting. So I think that was a mixture of naivety and some ignorance.

Archival tape – Congress member 3:

“Can you say with 100% certainty that TikTok does not use the phone's camera to determine whether the content that elicits a pupil dilation should be amplified by the algorithm? Can you tell me that?”

MARTY:

But also mixed with very genuine questions about TikTok.

Archival tape – Congress member 4:

“Has Bytedance spied on American citizens?”

Archival tape – Shou Chew:

“I don't think that spying is the right way to describe it.”

MARTY:

How compromised it is, about how firm the firewalls are between Bytedance and the CCP.

Archival tape – Shou Chew:

“I have seen no evidence that the Chinese government has access to that data. They have never asked us. We have not provided…”

Archival tape – Congress member 5:

“I find that actually preposterous.”

MARTY:

So despite some of the questions perhaps being ignorant at times, TikTok was not terribly persuasive, I think, in answering questions about national security and compromise.

Archival tape – Congress member 6:

“Without objection the committee is adjourned.”

RUBY:

And one of the other main lines of questioning put to TikTok was this concern that the ideas and the events that we’re exposed to on that app could actually be manipulated, by the Chinese government. Is that a realistic fear?

MARTY:

Yeah. So the short answer is yes. And I think it is realistic, given the proximity of the Chinese government to Bytedance. I think there are a couple of things that do distinguish TikTok, but at the same time, these threats exist throughout all social media. So we've seen Russia, for many years, use Twitter and Facebook to varying degrees of success to sow discontent and disinformation. We've seen China, Iran, stalk or abuse or intimidate their citizens living overseas, including in Australia. We've also seen kind of creepy data harvesting from Facebook, right? So not long ago, there was the Cambridge Analytica scandal. For years, Facebook secretly selling the data of tens of millions of users to a political consultancy firm. It settled at an undisclosed sum last year. So the idea of sowing unrest, sowing discontent, using social media to reach out and intimidate citizens, sinister data harvesting. These things aren't unique to China, and they're not unique to the platform of TikTok. But I think the thing that does distinguish TikTok is its proximity to an authoritarian state.

RUBY:

Yeah. It seems like this ban is really less about the app itself and more a reflection of the distrust that Australia and its allies have of the Chinese Communist Party right now.

MARTY:

Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. I think as evidenced by Mark Dreyfus’ short, neat statement on the ban, the Australian Government finds itself in the unusual space where one of, if not its largest threats, geopolitical threat, is also its largest trading partner. It wants to greatly improve relations with China and undo some of the diplomatic damage done by its predecessors. And at the same time is conspicuously tying its security future to the United States through the AUKUS deal. So there's these difficulties or contradictions that are kind of hard to reconcile. So at the moment there's a consensus in the Australian intelligence and defense community that a total prohibition of TikTok is preferable. But with that diplomatic delicacy I just sketched, it's seriously unlikely to think that the Albanese Government would move quickly on that and it will look to see what happens in America first.

RUBY:

Marty thank you so much for your time.

MARTY:

Thank you.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today…

Liberal MP Julian Leeser has resigned from the party after last week’s party room decision to oppose a voice to parliament.

The Shadow Attorney General and Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs announced he would be resigning from the frontbench, in order to dedicate his time to campaign for a Yes vote in the upcoming referendum.

Leeser has been a longtime supporter of the Voice, saying it is “an issue I have been working on for almost a decade”.

And,

Latitude Financial has announced it won’t pay a ransom demanded by hackers, following a major security breach in late March this year.

The breach resulted in 14 million records being compromised for both past and present customers in Australia and New Zealand.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.

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