Thread by @DrEricDing

📍Hey folks—on #TikTok—as an American born in China—I have a few thoughts in this post. First of all, I would NOT ever recommend allowing TikTok to access your contact book 📔 of friends, or let TikTok connect to find your Facebook friends, or add your phone number. TikTok claims to be a “global private company” but it’s a wholly owned Chinese company—how big of a deal is it? Well, years ago, Google hit the nuclear eject button and forced itself to fully pulled out of mainland China—why? Because Google got into a fight with Chinese govt—because any media company operating in China must be subject to CCP control and grant communications access (read: for censors/monitoring/data tapping) to the CCP government. Google refused—and hence Google doesn’t operate anywhere in mainland China anymore. For same reason… TikTok being owned by Bytedance, a wholly owned China company—they are subject to same CCP control. TikTok just needs to divested from China and become US owned. Do yourself a favor meantime — disconnect your address contact book 📕 and your FB from TikTok if you must use it, and try not to use your📱number if possible (but still use a 2FA). I don’t want a ban of TikTok but I do support the TikTok divestment from China (so that it is fully US owned). I think TikTok is useful and powerful, but we need to secure it for us fellow Americans by supporting the ***divestment*** so that US controls it. I hope people see I’m not anti-TikTok—I just want us to make it better and more secure to protect our freedom of speech, privacy, and civil liberties. Thanks for listening. And may there be peace ☮️ in the Middle East.

2) I recommend you disconnect as many access points to your phone as possible from TikTok, if you must use it. Trust me on this. I use a ton of social media (I run other large social pages besides Twitter)—but TikTok I don’t touch beyond the most basic limits.

3) Congresswoman @RepSpanberger knows what’s she’s talking about — she was a former CIA officer. TikTok will always be subject to Chinese data control as long as it is Bytedance owned.

@RepSpanberger 4) Google took on China for years… but it lost. Badly. Censorship and privacy just did not exist in Chinese media companies. Full saga here.

technologyreview.com/2018/12/19/138…

@RepSpanberger 5) Not even using VPN is entirely safe. China wants full control — even traffic via VPNs!

6) I’m seeing a lot of “But but but… FB/X/Google do it too” whataboutism. I think they miss the point — if FB/X/G does illegal things, we can hold them accountable under U.S. law. And F/X/G won’t help the US govt assassinate/muzzle dissidents, while Bytedance could for Xi/Putin. Civil liberties, privacy, and freedom of speech still matter in the U.S. — it does NOT in China or allied states like Putin’s Russia. Big difference.

@RepSpanberger 7) TikTok has **admitted** it used its app to spy on reporters and track their sources, according to internal email. They were tracking IP information & this was used to monitor journalists in the US. ➡️we want to avoid another journalist Jamal Khashoggi incident!