A man uses his phone outside a department store in Sydney in June 2019. An Australian senate select committee is looking into the potential for foreign interference in Australian politics through social media. Photo: AFP
Opinion
Gareth Nicholson
Gareth Nicholson
Debate on data privacy and Chinese apps could do with a dose of honesty
Australia wants to protect its online content from foreign interference, which China cannot object to, having long walled off its internet
It is normal for a country to debate what kind of content can and cannot be consumed within its borders, but this should be separate from the discussion over data privacy
Last week an Australian senate select committee held a hearing on the potential for foreign interference in Australian politics through social media. Executives from Meta, Twitter, TikTok and Google were invited to appear, although giant Chinese platform WeChat declined to participate.
Australian Liberal senator James Paterson, a China hawk, said the Tencent-owned app’s decision not to attend could be interpreted as “contempt”, although he acknowledged that WeChat executives could not be forced to appear because the company does not have representatives in Australia.
Meta (formerly known as Facebook) told the senate inquiry it plans to label government-affiliated media accounts on its new Twitter-like platform Threads and build out a fact-checking system – although it did not specify when this would be ready.
None of this should be controversial. It is normal for a country to debate what kind of content can and cannot be consumed within its borders, with the aim of blocking misinformation and material that may offend public morality or lead to destabilisation. Throughout history, every country has had its censors.
Beijing is unlikely to complain given it has long walled off its internet from foreign interference, a position buttressed in recent years by strict content policies aimed at blocking criminal activity, misinformation, defamation and, last but not least, information not in line with the country’s values.
However, this debate should be entirely separate from the discussion over data privacy – which has seen ByteDance’s TikTok and other Chinese apps, including WeChat, dragged through a political quagmire in the US recently.
TikTok CEO Chew Shou Zi prepares to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill on March 23, in Washington. Photo: Getty Images via AFP
In late March, US lawmakers harangued TikTok’s Singaporean CEO about potential Chinese influence over the platform and said its short videos were damaging children’s mental health. Chew Shou Zi denied the app shared data or had connections with China’s Communist Party and said it was doing everything it could to ensure the safety of its American users. His protestations fell on deaf ears.
Similarly, three years ago, the Trump administration said it was stepping up efforts to purge “untrusted” Chinese apps from US digital networks and called TikTok and WeChat “significant threats”. US President Joe Biden later rescinded this action but the mistrust remains.
But if US senators are concerned about Chinese apps collecting the data of American citizens, why are they not equally alarmed by US tech behemoths collecting the same data from not only Americans, but people from all around the world and using it for commercial ends?
This Rubicon was crossed a long time ago, and helps explain the meteoric rise of companies like Google and Meta. When the late Utah senator Orrin Hatch asked Mark Zuckerberg in 2018 how he sustained a business model where users don’t pay for the service, the Facebook founder and CEO came back with the deadpan reply: “Senator, we run ads”.
The success of social media giants has been built on their capacity to track user data, identify a person’s interests and the kind of content they consume, and better target advertising expenditure. ByteDance is no different and its “secret sauce” of recommendation algorithms provides the foundation for both TikTok and its Chinese news aggregator Jinri Toutiao.
Zuckerberg was grilled by Congress in 2018 due to data privacy issues and concerns about potential Russian disinformation on Facebook. The company was later fined US$5 billion by the Federal Trade Commission for privacy violations related to British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica collecting the personal data of millions of Facebook users without their consent.
Such concerns have led to tighter regulation, such as the European Union’s 2018 General Data Protection Regulation, which sets strict rules for organisations that collect, store or hold personal data belonging to EU citizens. The United States and China have also strengthened their laws – but tech giants the world over still use personal data to enhance and refine their services for users and advertisers.
The real reason Washington wants to crack down on Chinese apps like TikTok and WeChat is because they originate in China, and it’s the same reason Beijing wants to keep its internet closed off from the West – it’s a political decision.
The US sees itself as the leader of the free world, where democracy and capitalism flourish. China, on the other hand, is a one-party state ruled by the Communist Party and where economic activity is more tightly controlled.
When China’s economic power is rising and Beijing is becoming more assertive, it is unsurprising that Washington has been stirred. But let’s be honest and acknowledge this core political difference, rather than persecute Chinese companies for spurious reasons.
