Friday, 24 March 2023
TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, faces bans around the world 

It is often said that technology changes faster than the world can adapt. We marvel at new technological wonders only to realise some time later that there are unintended consequences of their use and that perhaps “something needs to be done”. Governments and regulators are on the back foot playing catch-up.

This seems to be happening around the world right now with the social media platform TikTok. Like many social media platforms it is hugely popular – it has more than a billion monthly users. Unlike most of the others, it is not owned by a US company but by a Chinese one, ByteDance. This means some people have TikTok in their sights.

At the end of last year, the app was banned from US government devices, a ban which is now being enforced. In January this year, US Republican Senator Josh Hawley and Congressman Ken Buck announced a plan to go even further, introducing the No TikTok on United States Devices Act which would mean the popular video-sharing social media platform would be completely banned in the USA.

Yesterday TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew was called to testify before the US Congress to plead the company’s case.

The issue is whether China’s government has access to data from the app, something it denies. The US government is asking the Chinese government to sell its investment in the company. (It is worth noting here that Twitter has investment from Qatar’s sovereign investment fund as well as Saudi’s Prince Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud.)

The USA is not alone in taking action against TikTok. Two and half years ago, the Indian government banned the platform along with 58 other apps, including the Chinese platforms WeChat and Weibo, which “harm India’s sovereignty as well as the privacy of [its] citizens”. The UK has also extended a ban on the use of the app on government devices and a moral panic about the app is being whipped up by the mainstream media.

At Index we are not fond of bans – we are a freedom of expression organisation after all. We have concerns that the motivation for this ban is ideological and less grounded in facts. If security is what is driving the calls there are other ways to protect our data. If a concern for our privacy is driving the calls then why not first address the app WeChat, which as Foreign Policy recently highlighted is far more nefarious in practice? We also want to point out the other side of the TikTok story, how it has given a voice to many including protesters in authoritarian regimes. Are we ready to silence those risking their lives in Iran or in Black Lives Matter demonstrations for what is really an ideological stance that does not bear much scrutiny?

In other technology news, much of the world has been marveling at the abilities of the artificial intelligence language tool ChatGPT, including this Shakespearean take on climate change. ChatGPT, and its rivals such as Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s AI-boosted Bing search engine, is as close to the AI that science fiction promised us (or should that be warned us about?). Some of the words produced by these bots are indistinguishable from those produced by people. We toyed with the idea of allowing one of these bots to write this newsletter but that already feels so last millennium.

But as with all things tech there are always the good consequences and the bad. With AI the bad is primarily in the disinformation war. If ChatGPT can churn out passable Shakespeare in just a few seconds, what will stop it generating fake news in real time? This story in the UK’s Financial Times, on the use of deepfake video tech to create news bulletins, shows just how powerful and believable AI can be. In full newsletter circle, the concerns about deepfakes have even led TikTok to ban them.

As we said before, Index is not fond of bans but it poses another question for us. At what point do we grant AI freedom of expression?

Mark Frary, associate editor

Uganda’s homicidal attack
One of the most damning bills was passed in Uganda on Tuesday to effectively outlaw homosexuality in both principle and practice. People who identify as LGBTQI risk life in prison, with the death penalty as punishment in certain cases. Homosexual acts are already illegal in the African country (in line with many other countries on the continent) and this bill ups the ante – now even identifying as gay is illegal, while an onus has been placed on friends, family members and associates to report people in same-sex relationships to the authorities. Media groups, journalists and publishers also face imprisonment for any content that advocates for gay rights or "promotes homosexuality". The debate around the bill is toxic; those on the ground have reported increased fear for advocating for LGBTQI rights and have effectively been silenced. We are sickened by this brazen attack.

Of the many people who were vocal in their condemnation of the bill was Ugandan activist and poet Stella Nyanzi (top right), who then had one of her tweets deleted. She has no idea why. We’ve seen the tweet and are none the wiser. This, after The Conversation highlighted this week how anti-Semitic tweets are increasing on the platform, is another worrying sign of what Twitter is becoming under Elon Musk.  

Nyanzi was on our radar already this week after she was denied a visa to attend the Imagine Belfast festival. We don’t know the ins and outs of this. What we do know is that – as reported in our issue Border Forces – the denial of visas for those in the free expression space appears to be growing and is straining vital sharing of information across borders. Photo: Chapter Four Uganda

We are still fighting SLAPPs
This Thursday Index hosted a one-day conference at Trinity College Dublin on SLAPPs - strategic lawsuits against public participation. Attendees heard from lawyers, journalists, academics, politicians and campaigners, including UN Special Rapporteur Mary Lawlor and human rights campaigner Bill Browder. For those who weren't at the conference, to you give you a taste of what was discussed read Index's Jessica Ní Mhainín on why these lawsuits are such an issue when it comes to media freedom here, as well as this article from Jemimah Steinfeld in which she talks about media heavyweights self-censoring out of fear as just one consequence.

From the archive

Rebel with a cause
Jemimah Steinfeld
June 2016

In this article, Index's editor-in-chief interviews China’s most famous political cartoonist, Wang Liming aka Rebel Pepper. The Chinese Communist Party and its leadership are frequent targets of his work. This week's ban on a Winnie the Pooh horror movie in Hong Kong raises memories of Wang's depiction of Xi Jinping as the avuncular bear.  
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