What Do Users Say About TikTok and Why Does It Work? An Encyclopedia Study of Russian Threats Against Drone Warfare

The app is alleged to be linked to the Chinese Communist Party, and Americans deserve to know how those actions impact their privacy and data security, as well as what actions TikTok is taking to keep our kids safe from online and offline harms.

Despite these initiatives, momentum to ban the app has only grown following revelations that ByteDance employees have repeatedly accessed the data of US users over the last few years.

As Russia’s war in Ukraine drags on, Ukrainian forces have proved resilient and mounted increasingly intense counterattacks on Kremlin forces. But as the conflict evolves, it is entering an ominous phase of drone warfare. Russia has begun launching attacks using Iranian drones to cause damage that is difficult to defend against. With Russian president Vladimir Putin escalating his rhetoric about the potential for a nuclear strike, and NATO officials watching closely for any signs of movement, we examine what indicators are available to the global community in assessing whether Russia is actually preparing to use nuclear weapons.

It is feared that the platform isn’t getting the development resources it needs anymore, and that customers should seriously consider migration to cloud email hosting. New research examines how the custodians of the encyclopedia ferret out state-sponsored misinformation.

Researchers have pointed out that the gangs like the Vice Society are maximizing profits and minimize their exposure because they don’t invest in technical innovation. Instead, they simply run the most sparse and unremarkable operations they can to target under-funded sectors like health care and education. We’ve got a guide to setting up passwords and other security tricks if you want to protect yourself.

Telling Us What You Did in September 2017: Microsoft Surveillance Adversarial Alert (TAGGAD) Incidents, Protected from Other Attacks

Wait, there’s more! Each week, we highlight the news we didn’t cover in-depth ourselves. Click on the headlines below to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

Microsoft stated this week that a misconfiguration exposed its prospective customers’ data. Researchers from the threat intelligence firm SOCRadar disclosed the leak to Microsoft on September 24, and the company quickly closed the exposure. SOCRadar said in a report that the exposed information stretched back to as far as 2017 and up to August of this year. The data was linked to many organizations from around the world. The exposed details included the names, phone numbers, email addresses, and files sent between potential customers and Microsoft or one of its authorized partners. Cloud misconfigurations are a longstanding security risk that have led to many exposures.

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-bytedance-americans-data-security-roundup/

Electronic Security Labels for IoT: Implications for American Intelligence and the Safety of Internet of Things in the United States and Other Countries

The security dumpster fire created by cheap, undefended internet of things devices in homes and businesses is not easy to improve. After years of problems, Singapore and Germany have begun adding security labels to internet-connected video cameras, printers, toothbrushes, and more. The labels give consumers a better understanding of the protections built into different devices—and give manufacturers an incentive to improve their practices and get a gold seal. The United States took a step towards this direction this week. The White House announced plans for a labeling scheme that would be a sort of EnergyStar for IoT digital security. The administration held a summit with industry organizations and companies this week to discuss standards and guidelines for the labels. The National Security Council said in a statement that a labeling program to secure devices would provide American consumers with peace of mind that the technology being brought into their homes is safe.

Sources told The Washington Post this week that sensitive information related to Iran‘s nuclear program and the United States’ own intelligence operations in China were included in documents seized by the FBI this summer at former President Trump‘s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. It would pose multiple risks if unauthorized disclosures of specific information in the documents were made. People aiding US intelligence efforts could be endangered, and collection methods could be compromised,” the Post wrote. The information could potentially lead to a response from other countries.

Open internet proponents were relieved last month when an American candidate beat a Russian challenger in an election to run the International Telecommunications Union, an important international standards body tasked with cross-boundary communications. Meanwhile, though, we took a look at the fragility of the world’s internet infrastructure and the vulnerability of crucial undersea cables.

The legal climate of abortion in the US is being seen by researchers as promoting a culture of community surveilance, a hallmark of authoritarian states where neighbors and friends are encouraged to report possible wrongdoing. Soccer stadiums around the world have seen a rise in security. The eight stadiums in use during the World Cup in 2022, in Qatar, will be filled with more than 15,000 cameras which will be used to watch and photograph spectators.

The Rust Programming Language: What is It Worth? Liz Truss’s Breakup in London and the News (with a Comment)

The Rust programming language is more secure, and it’s making inroads across the tech industry as a way to protect against common vulnerabilities. We have a list of the most important vulnerabilities that you can patch right now.

Liz Truss is having a rough time. Soon after her historically brief stint as the UK prime minister, the Mail on Sunday reported that agents working on behalf of Russia had hacked her personal cell phone when she was foreign minister. The Russian operatives were able to intercept messages between Truss and officials in other countries. The Mail report further claims that former prime minister Boris Johnson and cabinet secretary Simon Case suppressed the breach. While the breach remains unconfirmed, Labor Party officials are calling for an “urgent investigation” into their Conservative opponents. “National security issues which have been raised by an attack such as this will have been taken seriously by our intelligence and security agencies,” the shadow home secretary said last weekend. There are also questions about how this information has been given away in the way it’s been given away right now.

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-eu-privacy-policy-security-roundup/

Do You See The Cash App? The U.S. Treasury Department says it’s time to stop the cash app and stop the transaction of ransomware

Jack Dorsey is facing more heat this week. According to a Forbes investigation, the Cash App is helping fuel sex trafficking in the US and elsewhere. Based on police records, “hundreds of court filings,” and claims by former Cash App employees, the investigation found rampant use of the Cash App in sex trafficking and other crimes. The company is owned by Block Inc. and is dedicated to working with law enforcement. Forbes says that the National Center for missing and Exploited Children doesn’t have any tips about possible child abuse because block hasn’t provided any.

The US Treasury Department this week said US financial institutions facilitated ransomware payments totaling nearly $1.2 billion in 2021—a 200 percent increase since 2020. The report landed in the middle of an international White House summit to combat the rise of the type of software that allows attackers to hold a target for a fee until the victim pays. In a statement, Himamauli Das, acting Director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, said that attackers are a serious threat to national and economic security. The number doesn’t take into account the costs of an attack outside of the payment itself, which could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

The bill creates a formal process for government agencies to “deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit, investigate, or otherwise mitigate” services they deem threatening, as long as they have access to “sensitive personal data” from more than 1 million US persons. That could lead to forcing American companies to cut off relations with companies like TikTok. The bill also provides the Commerce secretary with a handful of lesser tools to mitigate risky transactions, like the ability to force companies to divest services.

The proposed legislation would stop all transactions in the US by social media companies with at least one million monthly users that are based in, or under the influence of, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea or Cuba.

In a statement, TikTok spokesman Jamal Brown said: “A U.S. ban on TikTok could have a direct impact on the livelihoods of millions of Americans. People whose lives are affected by their decisions should be heard by the lawmakers debating TikTok.

The company has been talking to the US government for a long time about a possible deal that would allow it to address national security concerns and still serve US users.

“We will continue to brief members of Congress on the plans that have been developed under the oversight of our country’s top national security agencies—plans that we are well underway in implementing—to further secure our platform in the United States,” McQuaide added.

TikTok: How Do You Get Your User’s Attention? A Call with the White House on the Crisis of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

The article was first published in theReliable Sources newsletter. The daily digest chronicles the evolving media landscape here.

Many of the lawmakers have concerns with location tracking within the app, which they fear could be used for espionage. When it comes to social media apps, location tracking is a standard feature.

Exceptions are provided for “law enforcement activities, national security interests and activities, and security researchers.”

But while legislators are working to limit TikTok, Berkman acknowledges how difficult it would be to get users off the app. Last year, the app reported that more than a billion users flock to its site each month.

The White House convened a call with 30 TikTok creators the day after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Jen Psaki, then the White House press secretary, and members of the National Security Council staff briefed the creators, who together had tens of millions of followers, on the latest news from the conflict and the White House’s goals and priorities. The meeting followed a similar effort the previous summer, in which the White House recruited dozens of TikTokers to help encourage young people to get vaccinated against Covid.

While the company said it would never be used for criminal purposes, national security experts say China-based businesses are often required to provide unfettered access to the authoritarian regime if information is ever sought.

Is TikTok the Red Scare or CFIUS? Observational Evidence from the Chinese Social Media Company Byte Dance

Most drastic measures have not advanced because the efforts lacked political will or courts stopped them.

The hysteria about TikTok is overblown. While some data concerns exist—though none more extreme than those over any US-based social media platforms—policies and discourse around TikTok in politics amount to a modern-day Red Scare. American politicians seem keen to point fingers at China for a lack of data security without holding a mirror up to themselves, as they keep allowing Big Tech lobbyists to quash any meaningful attempts at federal social media regulation. It is impossible to put the app back in the box without a ban on TikTok throughout the U.S. These TikTok bans will do more damage than good when educating good media citizens in college classrooms.

While ByteDance claims to maintain its operations in the US, there is no easy way to assess the extent to which that assertion is true, said Sameer Patil of the University of Utah.

He said that it’s usually overstated to what extent social media companies know about users on an individual level.

TikTok has been working to mitigate foreign threats to US data, and a keynote on Monday was presented by a company official. Byte Dance is the Chinese parent company of TikTok. Larry Ellison’s Oracle would play a role in auditing American data flows.

Another possible resolution is that the committee is satisfied with the steps TikTok has taken to ensure there is a firewall between U.S. user data and ByteDance employees in Beijing and the Chinese government.

CFIUS deliberations are famously secretive and happen behind closed doors. It is not clear when the committee might finish its investigation, nor is it known which way it is leaning.

TikTok: Protecting the US Army from China’s Government with a Geopolitical Antiquing App on Campuses

The application is banned in at least 14 states and several state-run universities blocked the application on their campuses.

This is in part because Byte Dance is required by Chinese law to assist the government, which could include sharing user data from anywhere in the world.

Is it possible to create a service like TikTok that is owned by the Chinese government in a way that insulates it from demands of China’s government? And I’m not sure that anything we saw on site there this week really spoke to that.”

It makes sense for US soldiers to be told that they shouldn’t use the app because it might give other entities their location information. The weather app is owned by China, but you can find lots of other apps in your phone, whether they’re owned by China or not.

Ryan Calo is an information science professor at the University of Washington. He says that, while data privacy in the United States still needs much improvement, the proposed legislation is more about geopolitical tensions and less about TikTok specifically.

If the Chinese intelligence sector wanted to obtain information about state employees in the United States, it would not have to go through TikTok.

“To say that the foreign government is a problem is easy, and also to protect you from that foreign government,” he says. I think we should be careful about how that can be politicized, in a way that goes far above the actual threat in order to achieve political ends.

The Silicon Valley: Why China is the Biggest Problem in the U.S. and Why Tech Giants See Seen Its Own Way

Calo is skeptical that the ban on TikTok would gain much political traction, and also believes that banning a communication platform would raise First Amendment concerns. Calo thinks the conversation could push policy in a positive direction for Americans.

He thinks the United States is right in thinking about the consequences of having so much commercial espionage taking place. “If we want to do something to address it, we need to pass privacy rules or laws, which seems very interested in doing, but which is not in this ad hoc posturing way.”

Tech giants have put their CEOs in Capitol Hill, who have made arguments about the threat of Chinese competition. They’ve also leaned on help from trade associations they’re members of and relied on advertising campaigns to make the case against some of the biggest legislative threats to their business.

The tech industry’s largest players have faced a kitchen sink of allegations in recent years. From knee-capping nascent rivals; to harming children and mental health; to undermining democracy; to spreading hate speech and harassment; to censoring conservative viewpoints; to bankrupting local news outlets; Big Tech has been made out as one of Washington’s largest villains.

A TikTok official said under its new server reorganization as part of Project Texas, China-based employees would never have this kind of access to American accounts.

Beckerman told Jake Tapper that they think the problems can be solved through the ongoing government negotiations.

Tech Walls and Wall Streets: The Case for a Reformulation of Social Media Dispatch in the Twenty-Year End of the Internet Age

Open Secrets has obtained public records showing that ByteDance had 17 lobbyists and spent over $300,000 on lobbying in 2019. The company had spent over five million dollars on lobbying by the end of last year.

A lot of money was spent on internet industry lobbying last year. Next was Amazon with $19 million, followed by Google with almost $10 million. The parent of Tik Tok spent less than half a million dollars in lobbying, still making it number four on the list.

One of the bills would prevent Amazon from being able to compete with third-party sellers on its own marketplace, as a result of the American Innovation and Choice Online Act. A 16-month investigation into the tech industry concluded in 2020 that many of the biggest tech companies were effectively monopolies.

The bill to increase the proportion of ad revenue that news organizations get was in the works for a brief moment this month. But the legislation stumbled after Meta warned it could have to drop news content from its platforms altogether if the bill passed.

Time and again, Silicon Valley’s biggest players have maneuvered expertly in Washington, defending their turf from lawmakers keen to knock them down a peg.

By contrast, decisions about the rules government might impose on tech platforms have called into question how those regulations may affect different parts of the economy, from small businesses to individual users to the future of the internet itself.

In some cases, as with proposals to revise the tech industry’s decades-old content moderation liability shield, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, legislation may raise First Amendment issues as well as partisan divisions. Section 230 allows social media companies a pass to leave out hate speech and offensive content, something Democrats have called for while Republicans prefer to change the law to force platforms to remove less content.

The cross-cutting politics and the technical challenges of regulating an entire sector of technology, not to mention the potential consequences for the economy of screwing it up, have combined to make it genuinely difficult for lawmakers to reach an accord.

The Impact of Facebook, Twitter, and the Internet on the Lives and Work of Media and Communications in the 21st Century: The Case of TikTok

“It’s really important to establishing a Republican brand. A central tenet of what unites Republicans now is taking a strong stance [and] standing up to China,” says Thad Kousser, professor of political science at U.C. San Diego.

More and more, social media is being used in higher education. The nature of communication has changed with the app.

From a teaching standpoint, how do we teach media and communications professors to teach savvy content creators even if we can’t teach the basics of modern media? Students can access TikTok within their homes, but professors can’t show it to their classroom because it’s not available in the internet browser. The use of TikTok by brands, companies, and novel forms of stories will force professors to no longer train their students in best practices for these purposes. Additionally, TikTok makes parts of the world more accessible, as students can see the things they are learning about in real time.

As these states implement their bans, their citizens are left disadvantaged by a fast-paced media world. Students in the states will be less likely to get a job in media and communications if their peers from other states get jobs.

Professors also must do research. If these bans persist, the social media scholars who have been hired in these states cannot do what they were hired to do. While university compliance offices have said the bans may only be on campus Wi-Fi and mobile data is still allowed, who will foot that bill for one to pay for a more expensive data plan on their phone? The answer is no one. While working at home does remain an option, professors are also employees who are expected to be on campus regularly to show they are in fact working. It is pointless for social media professors to research TikTok on campus if they must use mobile data, and it can be quite expensive, as you would have to pay for unlimited data or accidentally go over one’s limits.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is expected to appear before Congress in March to face questions from lawmakers over US user safety and security on the popular video app, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Mark Warner, is considering imposing a bill that would ban a broader category of applications that could be applied to other applications that pose security risks.

When a former president signed an executive order to ban the app, the app was owned by ByteDance, but it never went through.

All executive agencies, and those they contract with, must remove any application from TikTok or ByteDance within 30 days of the notice from Shalanda Young, the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Within 90 days, agencies must include in contracts that the short-form video app cannot be used on devices and must cancel any contracts that necessitate the app’s use.

In a rare public interview at the New York Times DealBook summit, the CEO of TikTok explained the company’s plan to relocate all data from Virginia and Singapore to a new subsidiary located in the US.

“I suspect that as government takes the significant step of telling all federal employees that they can no longer use TikTok on their work phones many Canadians from business to private individuals will reflect on the security of their own data and perhaps make choices,” Trudeau said.

China’s Charm Oscillations: A Sneak Look at the Last Days of Apple’s China-Delianged Charm Offshoot

Unlike Google, Apple has a lot to lose regarding its relationship with both the US and China. Cook has a lot of success at Apple because of his relationships with the Chinese government and manufacturers.

Some observers expect Washington to take action. Mira Ricardel, a former White House deputy national security adviser who advises businesses on regulations, says that there will be limitations this year. “There is a unanimity of view that will lead to doing something.” Here’s a peek at what it may look like.

India is blocking the TikTok. According to NetBlocks, there are a few small ISPs that allow access. And Ram Sundara Raman, lead developer for the University of Michigan’s Censored Planet project, says he was able to watch videos during a visit to India using the app he had downloaded in the US. The ban has made many Indians switch to rival services, including from Facebook, and caused turmoil for people who built businesses on TikTok.

Almost two months later, the order would prohibit cloud providers and internet infrastructure services from doing business with the company, but app stores wouldn’t be allowed to distribute TikTok. People or businesses could be fined or sentenced to prison if they were caught dodging the order. Ivan Kanapathy was a director of the National Security Council under Trump and is now vice president at policy consulting companyBeacon Global Strategies.

The company recently launched a full-fledged charm offensive that has included rapid-fire meetings in Washington with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, new transparency tools on the app and a first-ever tour to members of the media of its corporate campus in the Los Angeles area.

“There’s a lot of performative action going on,” said Adam Segal, a Chinese technology policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. He said it’s a desire to show toughness on China.

“But there’s also a lot of pent-up animosity toward social media broadly and its affect on children, U.S. democracy and misinformation, and it’s easier to take it out on Chinese-owned TikTok right now than it is, say, Facebook or Twitter,” Segal added.

TikTok’s relationship with Oracle started during the Trump administration, when the company was scrambling to find U.S.-based cloud servers as Trump pushed to have put the app out of business in the United States.

The U.S. Data Security Project Texas: A High-Resolution Public Relations Museum of TikTok’s Technology and Privacy Practices

TikTok officials said that theUSDS is going to hire 2500 people who have undergone high level background checks similar to what the U.S. government does. None of those hired were from China.

Still, aggregate data, like what kind of content is trending on the app or in what regions certain kind of videos are popular, can be analyzed by corporate employees in Beijing who would need to be granted special permission from the U.S. data security team.

The plan addresses many of the major security concerns U.S. officials have, said Jim Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, but that is no guarantee it will be approved.

Lewis said the Oracle plan would work. This kind of thing is standard. A reasonable solution may not be enough because TikTok has become so emotional.

Not reaching a deal would put TikTok in limbo and raise the possibility that ByteDance would completely spin it off, perhaps even selling it to an American tech firm.

Assuming the deal passes muster, though, Segal agreed that it resolves the bulk of the data security concerns by allowing inspections of its algorithm and transferring U.S. user data to Oracle.

Many details about Project Texas have trickled out in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and Reuters, but Tuesday’s gathering marked one of the first times the company has given an official briefing on the plan.

On Tuesday, TikTok officials led journalists through its Transparency and Accountability Center, which felt something like an interactive public relations museum.

Then there was a game of sorts that put people in the position of a TikTok content moderator, where they decided if a video violated TikTok’s rules or not.

Visitors who sign non-disclosure agreements will be allowed to look at the entire source code of TikTok, though journalists aren’t given an opportunity to do this.

TikTok: Preventing Political Explosions in the i-Particle Industry with Public Radio Broadcast Networks: Reply to Rep. Mike Rounds

The content moderation game brings home how difficult it is for thousands of people who have to make trade-offs every single day on an endless flow of videos but it’s mainly what’s important.

“We hope that by sharing details of our comprehensive plans with the full Committee, Congress can take a more deliberative approach to the issues at hand,” the TikTok spokesperson added.

“If you’re certainly willing to fly a balloon over your continental airspace—and have people see it with a naked eye—what would make you not weaponize data? Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, wants to use an app that is on the phone of sixty million Americans to influence politics in this country.

Mike Rounds of South Dakota is a republican senator and he says that they are trying to gather as much data as possible and even smallest items can add up to more data. “There’s a huge amount of data out there, which will never be touched, never be used, but it’s the small pieces that add up. They are working it. They are patient. They clearly think of us as a threat and are collecting data.

“None of the suggested … efforts were particularly relevant to my concerns,” senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat of Colorado, told congressional reporters after hosting Chew in his office last week.

TikTok ban bans all mobile devices of the US government: A unified voice for privacy and security in the tech-enabled world

TORONTO — Canada announced Monday it is banning TikTok from all government-issued mobile devices, reflecting widening worries from Western officials over the Chinese-owned video sharing app.

Canada’s federal privacy watchdog and its provincial counterparts announced an investigation to find out if the app complies with Canadian privacy legislation.

Concerns about possible Chinese interference in Canadian elections have prompted opposition parties to call for a public inquiry.

“It’s not only the fact that you can influence something, but you can also turn off the message as well when you have such a large population of listeners,” Gen. Paul Nakasone said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“Our status has been debated in public in a way that is divorced from the facts of that agreement and what we’ve achieved already. We will continue to do our part to deliver a comprehensive national security plan for the American people,” Brooke Oberwetter from TikTok said in statement.

The bill is expected to give the Commerce Department the authority to make “mitigation measures,” which could include a ban, to meet the risk posed by foreign linked technologies.

Similar to the US government’s push to ban equipment made by Chinese companies, US officials don’t provide much detail when it comes to showing proof of the Chinese government collaborating with ByteDance.

“People are always looking for the smoking gun in these technologies,” NSA Cybersecurity Director Rob Joyce told reporters in December. I think it’s a loaded gun.

Kaine, who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is one in a bipartisan group of US senators who are demanding briefings from intelligence officials and tech experts. These lawmakers fear that US financial institutions could be vulnerable to social-media-induced bank runs and that malicious actors could use misinformation and bots to manipulate public opinion and create chaos in the financial system.

Silicon Valley Bank collapsed earlier in March after it became clear it had made a bad bet on long-dated government debt, which meant it no longer had enough capital to comfortably pay back depositors. Many of its customers were venture capitalists and tech company founders, some of whom spread news (and speculation) on WhatsApp, Slack and social media, driving a panic some analysts and lawmakers think helped accelerate the bank’s demise.

What is social media doing to destroy the United States? A New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and the Sen. Michael McCaul whose tweets on TikTok may be “digital Fentanyl”

As he walked onto the Senate floor, he was nervous and his voice dropped like he didn’t want people at the Capitol to hear him. I am nervous.

Banking regulators have been aware of social media’s potential to drive wild movements in public markets since 2021, when shares in Gamestop, a video game retailer, shot from $20 to $483 over a two-week period, before plummeting back down. The Securities and Exchange Commission blamed investment forums on Reddit for fueling the episode.

In recent years, members of the Intelligence Committee have received a number of briefings on the potential for manipulating US markets with deepfakes.

“Foreign actors have been using social media to harm America at least since 2016, as we have evidence of what they tried to do to disrupt our election,” says Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat. The use of social media by Russia, China, and Iran to divide Americans is something that they do to undermine the United States. So yes, that’s a risk.”

TikTok has 7,000 American employees, less than the 10,000 or more they wanted in 2020 but a big jump over the 1,400 US employees they had that year.

Republican Rep. Michael McCaul dubbed TikTok a “spy balloon in your phone,” while Republican Rep. Mike Hagy referred to it as “digital Fentanyl.”

CNN Primetime: Bringing Back the U.S. to the Investigative Plan of the TikTok Network: Stories of Small Business Owners

Tensions between the U.S. and China have been on the rise in recent years, as federal officials worry about China’s growing technological prowess. Washington also is watching China conduct military displays in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, not to mention China’s surveillance balloon traversing across the U.S.

CNN is going to investigate the issues of TikTok’s ties to China and the impact on peoples’ mental health, as a number of lawmakers raise national security concerns about the app. CNN Primetime asked if it was time for TikTok. Thursday, March 23 at 9 p.m. ET.

At a Harvard Business Review conference where executives, professors and artists appeared for talks on emotional intelligence, Shou Chew attempted to save his company.

Chew’s heightened visibility appears to be part of a larger messaging campaign by TikTok to bolster its reputation in the US and remind voters – and their representatives – how essential the social network is to American culture.

Dozens of social media creators will gather at the steps of the Capitol on Wednesday for a press conference. A company is paying for a large amount of advertisements for the Beltway audience. American small business owners who rely on the platform for their livelihoods were highlighted in a docuseries last week.

TikTok invited scientists and researchers to its Washington, D.C., offices to learn how it is working to address lawmakers concerns about its ties toChina through its parent company, Byte Dance, behind the scenes. Its parent company has also ramped up federal lobbying, spending more than $5 million last year, according to data tracked by OpenSecrets.

One of the most aggressive moves ever made by a social media company was to set a one hour daily screen time limit for all users under the age of 18. It rolled out a feature that aimed to offer more information to users about why its powerful algorithm recommends certain videos. And the company pledged more transparency to researchers.

The stories of small business owners were highlighted in the series. The first of the 60-second clips features a Mississippi soap maker with a deep Southern accent who built her company on the app, and the second features an educator who quit his job to focus on sharing informational videos on TikTok aimed at teaching toddlers how to read.

The list of people expected to attend includes an Asian American creator using her platform to fight ableism, a small business owner from South Carolina who used TikTok to start their business, and an Ohio-based chef who built his bakery business using the app. Some of the creators have large followings on TikTok.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/22/tech/tiktok-messaging-campaign/index.html

TikTok and the PR Campaign: What have we learned from the last few years? — A question for Sherman, Gorman, and Krishnamoorthi

Sherman had some doubts about how persuasive the PR push was because of how divided Washington is right now.

Lindsay Gorman, a senior fellow for emerging technologies at the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy and a former Biden administration adviser, said that “by and large, TikTok’s lobbying efforts so far have been pretty ineffective.”

It has gotten more attention because there is more knowledge of the problem, says Raja Krishnamoorthi, the top Democrat on the House Select Committee on China.