The UK Parliament closed its TikTok account after lawmakers raised concerns about the risk of the data being passed on to the Chinese government. Account was locked and content deleted days after launch. Senior deputies and colleagues called for the account to be removed until TikTok gave “credible assurances” that no data could be delivered to China.
TikTok is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, which in turn has denied that it is controlled by the Chinese government. It is worth noting that relations between London and Beijing have been strained in recent years, with tensions heightened by China’s sanctioning of several lawmakers last year.
A spokesperson for the UK Parliament said:
“Based on member feedback, we are closing the UK Parliament TikTok pilot account sooner than we planned. The account was a pilot initiative as we tested the platform as a way to reach younger audiences with relevant content about Parliament.”
security concerns
Peers and lawmakers – including former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith and recent Conservative leadership candidate Tom Tugendhat – have signaled these concerns in a letter to the Speakers of both Houses of Parliament.
In the letter, the peers and lawmakers, who were sanctioned by the Chinese government for speaking out about human rights abuses in the country, said they were “surprised and disappointed” by the Parliament’s decision to open the account. The letter said that the data security risks associated with the app were “considerable”.
TikTok executives “failed to assure lawmakers that the company could prevent the transfer of data to ByteDance should the parent make a request,” the letter read. He further added: “The prospect of Xi Jinping’s government gaining access to personal data on our children’s phones should be of grave concern.“.
Last month, Theo Bertram, vice president of government relations and public policy at TikTok in Europe, wrote to Representative Darren Jones, chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee. In a letter, he said that “we were never asked to provide TikTok user data to the Chinese government, nor would we if asked“.
Nus Ghani, one of the Conservative MPs who expressed concern about TikTok, welcomed the closure of Parliament’s account on the app.
In a tweet, she thanked the speakers for “upholding our values and protecting our data”, adding that “common sense prevails”. The publication included a letter from the speakers, who said they “were not consulted on the plans for this pilot project”.
This article is a translation of the writing by Joshua Laughed to the website BBC News.
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