Photo Credit: Shutterstock
The debate continues to intensify over whether or not TikTok is a harmless social media platform. In a best-case scenario, TikTok is just a fun way to share viral videos and hang out with your friends. In a worst-case scenario, though, TikTok might be a subversive tool specifically designed by the Chinese surveillance state to watch over you every moment of the day.
Who really runs TikTok?
The first thing you need to know about TikTok is that it’s owned by a larger Chinese company called ByteDance that’s based in Beijing. Thus, even though TikTok seems harmless enough, the evidence is mounting that all of your comments, likes, follows, and content are being carefully scrutinized by ByteDance in China. And, since this company has known ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), that means that you’re being at least indirectly tracked by a potential adversary of the United States.
ByteDance and biodata
What makes all of this particularly chilling is that the scope of surveillance appears to be widening in unpredictable new ways. For example, ByteDance is now looking to expand its reach into biology, chemistry, and drug discovery. New job postings on LinkedIn say they want to find young hires who can help them “revolutionize drug discovery” and “solve challenges in natural sciences.” In some cases, the job descriptions mention artificial intelligence.
On the surface, this doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. Why would a digital media company want to get involved in biology, chemistry, and drug discovery? From a business perspective, there doesn’t seem to be a clear rationale. And that’s why a lot of people are getting very worried. What does ByteDance really want to accomplish with this move?
Possible scenarios
The scenarios, as you might imagine, vary widely. According to some social media experts, ByteDance just wants to help young people. These new forays into drug discovery are really just all about boosting the health and wellness of its users. Obviously, TikTok users share a lot of personal health and wellness data, so they might be the perfect demographic to include in feedback loops and market surveys. Or maybe TikTok is looking for ideas for trendy new food items or nutritional supplements?
And then you have the more business-like, pragmatic scenario. According to this line of thinking, TikTok wants to monetize your data without paying you for it. They are looking for ways to get access to your personal data without seeming to be asking for it. At the very least, they might be able to monetize discussions over health and wellness by feeding all this data into algorithms or by selling it to third parties.
And, finally, there’s the really creepy scenario. According to this line of thinking, China is looking to develop bioweapons that are specifically created to harm Americans. This type of conspiracy theory first became prominent around the COVID-19 pandemic, when theories about the Wuhan Lab were circulating widely.
Is it really happening?
At this point, it’s hard to figure out what exactly the link is between TikTok, ByteDance, and the new initiatives related to chemistry, biology, and drug discovery. But it’s better to be safe than sorry. If TikTok starts asking you to share your DNA, or starts asking questions about your Ancestry.com results, you might want to ignore those requests for the foreseeable future.
