The BBC Tells Employees Please Don’t Download TikTok

The BBC has 4.4 million followers on TikTok and posts new videos to its main account every few hours. If you work at the venerable British broadcasterHowever, the organization says you shouldn’t look at these TikToks. The BBC sent its staff a memo on Sunday, urging them not to download the world’s scariest Chinese app.

“We do not recommend installing TikTok on a BBC company device unless there is a legitimate business reason,” the BBC wrote to employees, according to the BBC Bloomberg. “If you don’t need TikTok for business reasons, TikTok should be deleted.”

A BBC spokesman said it was all about data. “The BBC takes the security of our systems, data and people incredibly seriously,” the spokesman said. “We are constantly reviewing activity on third party platforms – including TikTok – and will continue to do so.” The BBC will continue to use TikTok for editorial and marketing purposes but “will continue to monitor and assess the situation”.

Fans of major British television who like short-form highlights need not worry. The BBC has published 13 videos on its main account in the last 24 hours, despite the company’s own warnings. I recommend this one about how snails have sex voiced in particular by David Attenborough, which is without exaggeration one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. The BBC also maintains a long list of other accounts, including pages for its news, sports and music content.

TikTok and the BBC are competitors. The BBC is an entertainment company and as such is fighting for the same eyeballs as TikTok. Whether fears of spying are real or not, the admonition to download the app may be motivated by business concerns.

The Beeb follows in the footsteps of some much larger organizations. Namely world governments.

Britain is the youngest major government Ban TikTok on official devices, join other global powers, including the US, EU and Canada. Britain held out for months, calling for the app to be banned. Critics of TikTok bans used the UK’s inaction as evidence that bans are based on political and economic posturing rather than security concerns, but the UK finally relented and banned TikTok last Thursday.

TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Company based in Beijing. In China there is a law that states companies based there must release data whenever the Chinese Communist Party wishes. Many people worry that TikTok may also censor content or promote propaganda to further the Chinese government’s goals.

Nobody has Evidence provided that any of these things happened, and TikTok vehemently denies the possibility that this could happen in the future. However, TikTok itself has admitted that its employees accessed information about US journalists in order to spy on them. A The former TikTok employee turned whistleblower told Congress last week that the company’s proposed security measures, dubbed “Project Texas,” will do little to protect TikTok users’ data from Chinese government access.

In the US, politicians are considering a ban that would throw TikTok out of the country altogether. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is set to testify before Congress Wednesday at a House Energy and Trade Committee hearing where politicians will compete in a contest to say the meanest thing they can think of. The Biden administration, which has been negotiating with TikTok for years to organize a deal that would ease fears about digital security, reportedly said ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban. This means that the government has gone back to earlier President Trump’s favorite plan from 2020.

In other words, we’ve come full circle to the dumbest possible solution to concerns about TikTok, and it’s time for us to tap the mark. As for privacy and security, It doesn’t matter who owns TikTok, because American social media companies are collaborating with Chinese ad tech companies. That means American companies are exposing American data to the very same risks that seem to make TikTok such a threat.

Any “fix” that only focuses on TikTok will not keep the data out of the hands of the Chinese government. The internet is designed to share data with whom it wants. If TikTok were to disappear from the face of the earth, the Chinese government could still buy data from any of the hundreds of American data brokers that have them for sale. If the government doesn’t fix the internet’s general privacy problems, they’re not protecting anyone’s data, period.