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A federal committee looking into the risks to Australia from foreign interference via social media and other online sources has been told that broader laws are called for.
Lindsay Gorman of the Alliance for Securing Democracy told the committee that while addressing TikTok now was useful, continuing to monitor such apps on a case-by-case basis would simply lead to a “whack-a-mole” approach.
“I do not think a platform-by-platform approach is remotely effective, as we’re seeing with TikTok today,” she said, as reported by AAP.
“If we had this comprehensive framework that we recommended in place years ago, we would have addressed TikTok back in 2019 or 2020, and we will be ready for the next one because it’s absolutely a game of whack-a-mole if we’re taking it platform by platform.”
While TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, claim that they are not trying to influence Western democracies, Gorman believes their operations are part of a larger picture.
“Social media is best understood as one element in a broader toolkit to influence and interfere in democratic institutions and to control and weaponise the information environment,” she said.
However, a broader approach to limiting possible influence from foreign social media could disproportionately affect immigrant communities, the committee was told. Yaqiu Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch, picked out the Chinese social media app WeChat as a good example.
The app is used by a large number of Chinese Australians to remain in contact with family members still living in China.
“Make the companies transparent, force them to disclose the stuff they censor and promote, then let’s go from there,” she said.
“It’s a critical tool for communication between the diaspora and with China, so let’s not go to the ban.”
TikTok has been facing up against bans from all around the world, with Australia the last of the Five Eyes alliance to follow suit with a ban on the use of the app on government-supplied devices.
TikTok chief executive Shou Chew appeared before a US congressional committee last month, where he defended the company, directly referencing how user data is stored in the US.
“The bottom line is this: American data stored on American soil, by an American company, overseen by American personnel,” Chew said. “Today, US TikTok data is stored by default in Oracle’s servers. Only vetted personnel operating in a new company, called TikTok US Data Security, can control access to this data. Additionally, we have plans for this company to report to an independent American board with strong security credentials.”
However, members of the committee remain unswayed by Chew’s arguments.
“You remind me a lot of [Mark] Zuckerberg ... when he came here, I said he reminds me of Fred Astaire: a good dancer with words,” said Californian Democrat Tony Cárdenas. “And you are doing the same today. A lot of your answers are a bit nebulous; they’re not yes or no.”
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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