New Zealand joins countries around the world by banning TikTok on government-issued devices as the US threatens an outright ban on the popular social media app, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.
Australia and New Zealand move to ban TikTok on government phones
It’s a strange contrast in some ways. Australia just signed a deal that may cost them up to $368b for nuclear-powered submarines as part of the Aukus alliance, while also deeming the social media app TikTok to be too dangerous to be on the phones of government politicians and officials. After much speculation, the Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Albanese government will announce a ban on the use of TikTok on government-provided devices this week. An email from Parliamentary Service chief executive Rafael Gonzalez-Montero, leaked last week, has informed New Zealand MPs that similar moves would be made here.
China’s response to our ban has “echoes of” the response to the Huawei ban
BusinessDesk’s Ben Moore reports (paywalled) that while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade doesn’t expect the ban to impact our trading relationship with China, China has taken note of the ban, based on a response by a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry. Moore writes that it had echoes of the “it’s not fair” stance Huawei proponents took when it was the subject of bans last decade. In a great overview of the delicate balancing act foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta will be undertaking in China at the moment that covers a range of issues, Newsroom’s Sam Sachdeva reminds us that bilateral relations with China were considered to be at “their lowest ebb” when Chinese-owned Huawei was shut out of our country’s 5G network.
Why TikTok?
TikTok is owned by Chinese company ByteDance. Last year, it temporarily dethroned Google as the most visited website in the world. It is touted as the most downloaded app of 2022. To the average user, it’s a place to create and watch short videos. The United States has been leading the charge on banning TikTok, with the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission warning that ByteDance could share TikTok user data with the Chinese government. This is a good explainer from The Guardian but concerns are driven by a law implemented in China in 2017 that requires companies to give the government any personal data relevant to the country’s national security. There’s no evidence TikTok has turned over such data, but like all social media apps, TikTok collects a vast amount of user data.
US threatening outright ban, urging Australia to so the same
The US is now threatening an outright ban on TikTok unless the social media company’s Chinese owners divest their stakes in it. It’s not unprecedented. Axios has a breakdown of the full or partial bans on TikTok currently in place across the globe. A top US technology regulator is now urging Australia to completely ban TikTok, describing the ban on it being on government phones as the “lowest of the low-hanging fruit”. While New Zealand hasn’t yet been asked to consider an outright ban by the US, prime minister Chris Hipkins and New Zealand officials had to hose down talk of a new “cutting edge technology” initiative with the US on Tuesday, after a visiting senior White House official talked it up. Rae Hodge of Salon writes that banning TikTok outright in the US is pointless political theatre. If nothing else, TikTok bans, partial or outright, are a clear sign that geo-political battlegrounds have extended beyond what lies beneath the water and into what we’ve got in our pockets.