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Lucy Hitchcock made the decision to share a joyous video on TikTok as her fledgling company finally began to take off.
Seven months earlier, the British businessman who launched Partner in Wine started selling insulated wine bottles and tumblers. She came up with the concept while sipping warm rosé outside in the pleasant weather.
Hitchcock was shocked when her video caused a 1,700% increase in sales overnight because she hadn’t anticipated much of a response.
“I’d made thousands of pounds of sales and it was only seven o’clock in the morning,” she recalls. “Every time I checked the video, it would go up by 20,000 views at a time.
“I sat in my office all day, just shaking and thinking ‘What the hell?’.”
Social networking is currently her company’s “driving force.” The 31-year-old credits viral videos on TikTok for bringing Selfridges, Liberty London, and Oliver Bonas to her door – along with half her annual sales.
Hitchcock is one of a rising group of “bizfluencers” who interact with clients via the social networking platform, which has 23 million UK users.
TikTok is used by more than one billion people worldwide to share a variety of content, such as meal plans, pet videos, news headlines, tarot card readings, gym videos, book suggestions, and more.
But, despite the app’s enormous popularity, especially among teenagers and young adults, the platform is in for a rude awakening as western governments worry about its connections to China.
Officials are not allowed to use the app on government-issued devices, according to the European Commission, the US, and Canadian governments, and there have been proposals to go even further.
Republicans in the US House of Representatives debated a prohibition on Tuesday that would apply to the general public, cutting off an estimated 100 million Americans.
Josh Hawley, a Republican senator and vocal opponent of China, has cautioned that if TikTok is allowed to run uncontrolled, Beijing may have access to a “backdoor into Americans’ lives.”
In the UK, former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith says the app is a “Chinese government data harvester”, while foreign affairs committee chairman Alicia Kearns warns it could let Beijing “capitalize on our vulnerabilities”.
“Yet again, the Government is dragging its heels,” adds Sir Iain. “The UK should recognize the threat and act now.”
The calls have so far been rejected by the government. The UK Government will not impose any limits, according to Science, Innovation and Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan, who stated this on Tuesday. She claimed that using TikTok should remain a “personal choice” for residents.
On the surface, TikTok appears to be just another social media app that connects and entertains users while providing Homemade content. The application collects enormous quantities of personal data, but so do rivals like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
The distinction? someone could profit from the information.
Due to the fact that ByteDance, a business with its headquarters in Beijing, owns TikTok, it is governed by national security legislation that was enacted by the Chinese government in 2017. They mandate that businesses provide whatever data that the government requests, according to Alan Woodward, a professor of cybersecurity at Surrey University.
The software gathers information about users’ approximate locations as well as their contact details, including phone numbers, email addresses, and dates of birth. Additionally, TikTok requests access to contacts and the ability to monitor other phone activities.
According to Woodward, “I don’t think TikTok is worse than others in terms of the information it captures. “But, with a platform like Facebook, they do it because they want to make money by selling that data.
“The Chinese are problematic because—why are they collecting? The 2017 laws imply that there is a chance they might be collecting it for purposes other than for profit, which is what you can’t help but assume.
Even if China demanded it, TikTok claims that the company would never divulge user information.
Other scholars have also questioned the validity of the data collected by TikTok. According to the Internet Governance Project, China could readily purchase data collected by TikTok elsewhere on the open market. TikTok was likely “a commercially-motivated enterprise,” not a Trojan horse, it was found.
Yet, the business has acknowledged that, in some cases, Chinese employees could remotely access data on clients in the United States and Europe.
The story of British journalist Cristina Criddle, whom TikTok workers attempted to eavesdrop on using private company information, is also troubling. Criddle came under attack for publishing pieces for the Financial Times that the employees mistook for insider information.
This kind of incident fuels the worries of Western policymakers. Some question what prevents the Chinese government from using the platform’s data to snoop on citizens or from tampering with TikTok’s algorithm to ban some ideas while encouraging others during an election.
Calls to outlaw the app are still viewed as a drastic measure that may not even be feasible.
According to Surrey’s Woodward, ordering internet service providers in the US or Europe to prohibit TikTok online might be readily avoided by tech-savvy users who could use “proxy” systems to conceal their country of origin.
Governments would need to find a way to force smartphone manufacturers Apple and Google to disable the app on their platforms, according to Woodward. The move will likely discourage the majority of casual users given the popularity of the iPhone and Android operating systems.
Yet even then, those who were determined to get through could still find workarounds – and the app would likely morph into a wild west of misinformation.
“It won’t stop TikTok being used,” explains Woodward. “It will just drive it underground.”
Beyond the technical aspects, there is also the not-insignificant issue of free speech. Should governments really step in to stop people from using video-sharing apps?
The American Civil Liberties Union says not: “Americans have a right to use TikTok and other platforms to exchange our thoughts, ideas, and opinions,” the group said in a letter to US lawmakers.
TikTok claims it has already gone “above and beyond” to convince US officials that its platform is safe when asked about the possible ban in the US.
The business has agreed to let US IT behemoth Oracle review its software updates before they are released, and it has also shifted US user data to local servers. In Europe, similar actions are being taken.
A spokesman says: “It would be unfortunate if the House foreign affairs committee were to censor millions of Americans, and do so based not on actual intelligence, but on a basic misunderstanding of our corporate structure.”
As the row rumbles on, millions of influencers and entrepreneurs like Hitchcock risk getting caught in the crossfire.
“TikTok is an amazing, entrepreneurial community,” she says. For her, a ban would be “hugely sad.”