One of the most popular apps of 2019, TikTok ruled the download charts in both the Android and Apple markets. Having more than and approximately half a billion monthly active users, TikTok definitely has access to a trove of users. With that large user base comes a hidden goldmine: their data. 1.5 billion downloads A problem however, is that their key demographic is minors and with this arises the deeply sensitive question of how the data collected from these minors can be maliciously utilized. TikTok was called Douyin and was initially intended for the Chinese market only (released in 2016). However, ByteDance (the company that owns TikTok) . To amass users from the US and Europe, TikTok bought and merged with Musical.ly in November 2017, a company that also had a young user base. The app’s selling feature is that it allows its users to lip-sync to famous songs. This has attracted the attention of many children and with it apprehensive parents and lawmakers. decided to expand to the international market The Problem with TikTok Much like nearly every other app, it requires the user to agree to a privacy policy, however since , these children don’t really know what they are signing off to. most of its users are under the age of 13 Herein lies the core violation by TikTok. By allowing thirteen-year-olds to sign off on their privacy policy, they are simply doing the bare minimum to ensure informed consent. In fact, the effort to inform is so minimal (and negligent) that in the US, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) under the age of 13. fined TikTok for collecting the information of children The primary argument was that by not allowing for more stringent parental consent or approval, TikTok failed to give proper informed consent (as the agreement by under-13 minors wasn’t considered valid). Secondly the to reflect the fact that TikTok had ‘illegally’ collected the personal information of these minors, which was simply used to improve their video suggestion algorithm. fine was quantified to $5.7 million TikTok User Data in China By not being very transparent in the way they handle their data, it opens the company up to further criticism. In fact, esteemed professor and privacy buff, David Caroll, poured through TikTok’s privacy policy. Shockingly, he found out that until February 2019, where there are a different set of (and a lot less stringent) rules which govern data use. part of user data was processed in China By not clearly disclosing how data would be handled and being dodgy about key elements regarding data ownership, TikTok committed yet another morally questionable action which could be deemed unethical. The issue of inadequate effort to obtain informed consent and lack of transparency in conveying data ownership are the ethical objections in this case study. However, TikTok have in some ways rectified their actions. They have along with the corresponding data. They have also promised to enforce more stringent measures to reduce this from happening in the future. However, there still remain some other potential ethical landmines for TikTok to navigate through. deleted all accounts of those under 13 I wrote this piece as part of a online course I took titled Data Science Ethics. For those interested in exploring the moral policing of technology, this course is a great place to begin. Previously published on: https://lucidityproject.home.blog/2020/01/26/tiktok-a-ticking-time-bomb/
