Category Archives: TikTok

TikTok Crackdown Shifts Into Overdrive With Sale or Shutdown On Table

TikTok,

Legislation that would ban TikTok in the U.S. or force its sale is hurtling toward a vote in the House following months of behind-the-scenes efforts on Capitol Hill. The new push caught the service off-guard, ratcheting up interest from possible buyers and raising the possibility that one of the most popular apps in the country could soon be shut down, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Already, U.S. tech and media titans are circling. In recent days, some executives have discussed buying TikTok if ByteDance agrees to sell. Bobby Kotick, the former chief executive of videogame publisher Activision, has expressed interest to ByteDance Executive Chair Zhang Yiming, according to a person familiar with the situation. Any price tag is estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Kotick is looking for partners. At a dinner at an Allen & Co. conference earlier this week, Kotick floated the idea of partnering to buy TikTok to a table of people that include OpenAI Sam Altman, according to people familiar with the situation. OpenAI could use TikTok to help train its AI models if a partner such as Kotick could raise the capital for such an acquisition.

TikTok sees two ways to stop the bill from becoming law, according to a person close to the company. The first is the Senate, where some senators have already expressed opposition to legislation that could effectively ban the app in the U.S., citing wanting to protect free speech and a desire not to meddle in business.

Should it pass both the House and the Senate and be signed by President Biden, TikTok could also challenge the legality of the bill, arguing that it violates the First Amendment.

Forbes reported that there is a real possibility that the US government will pass legislation that China’s ByteDance must divest itself from TikTok or risk being banned in the US entirely. Its making its way through congress and Joe Biden himself said he would sign it if it reached his desk.

As such, US buyers are potentially circling, including a recent departure from the gaming industry, former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick.

According to Forbes, Kotick left Activision shortly after Microsoft acquired it, ending a tenure marked by scandal involving a culture of sexual harassment at the company with some accusations even leveled at him personally. But he ended up escaping with enormous amounts of cash, and is now trying to find partners to potentially buy TikTok should ByteDance actually be forced to divest.

Engadget reported Bobby Kotick, the former CEO of Activision Blizzard who stepped down at the end of last year, is apparently interested in buying TikTok as a new bill in the US threatens to ban the app or force its sale.

According to Engadget, Kotick’s alleged interest in TikTok comes at a tumultuous moment for the immensely popular platform after lawmakers introduced the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications app” last week.

In my opinion, having Bobby Kotick (and whomever he partners with) to buy TikTok was not something I expected to happen. His potential partner, Sam Altman, appears to want to use the data of TikTok users to train his AI models. This will not be good for TikTok users.

TikTok Is Urging Users To Call Congress About A Looming Ban

TikTok,

As support grows for a bill in Congress that would effectively ban TikTok in the US, the video platform is trying to rally support among a key group: its own users, The Verge reported.

TikTok sent users in the US a push notification on Wednesday, warning that “Congress is planning a total ban of TikTok” that would [strip] 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression.” The page says that a ban would “damage millions of businesses, destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country, and deny artists an audience.”

The alert includes a way for users to find their representatives and call their office.

According to the Verge, the notification comes shortly after the White House expressed support for a bipartisan bill directed at TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. The bill — called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act — is in response to the perceived national security risks of TikTok, particularly around how the company collects user data.

The bill would require that TikTok break off from ByteDance or risk being removed from app stores in the US.

Axios reported members of Congress are being flooded with calls from angry constitutions after TikTok launched a new campaign warning its users that the Chinese-owned app was at risk of being shut down in the U.S.

According to Axios, a key House committee voted unanimously Thursday afternoon to advance bipartisan legislation that would force ByteDance — TikTok’s Chinese parent company — to divest its ownership of the app within 165 days.

The highly unusual 50-0 vote in the House Energy Commerce Committee — which unveiled the bill two days ago alongside the China Select Committee — reflected some of the anger among members about TikTok’s pressure campaign.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said Thursday he would “absolutely” put the bill on the House floor.

The White House also indicated that President Biden would sign the bill, injecting new urgency— and aggression — into TikTok’s campaign to counter the yearlong efforts to address the app’s national security risks.

After asking users to enter their ZIP code, TikTok then directed them to call their representative in Congress and let them “know what TikTok means you and tell them to vote NO.”

Axios also reported that the authors of the bill responded furiously to what they called a “massive propaganda campaign,” emphasizing that TikTok would not be banned if ByteDance divests its ownership.

“TikTok is characterizing it as an outright ban, which is of course an outright lie,” House China Select Committee Chair Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) told reporters.

“So bad we turned phones off… Which means we could miss calls from constituents who actually need urgent help with something,” a senior Democratic aide added.

In my opinion, TikTok appears to be engaging in propaganda, by making its users feel that the app could disappear from their phones. Ironically, this is causing lawmakers in Congress to turn off their phones. I don’t think the pressure campaign from TikTok is working.

Lawmakers Introduce Bill That Would Punish App Stores For Hosting TikTok

TikTok,

After a long reprieve from serious congressional scrutiny, lawmakers are taking another crack at getting TikTok to sever ties from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, The Verge reported. 

The leaders of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, chair Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and ranking member Raja Krishamoorthi (D-IL), announced the introduction of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act on Tuesday. The bill, which has 19 lawmakers signed on so far, would make it illegal to distribute apps controlled by ByteDance, including TikTok, unless they sever ties from the Chinese tech giant.

According to The Verge, if enacted, the bill would impose a civil penalty on app stores and web hosting services that distribute TikTok and other covered services, unless the app is separated from Chinese ownership. The penalty for an app store that violates the law would be calculated by multiplying the number of US users that “accessed, maintained or, or updated” the foreign adversary app by $5,000. The bill would be enforced by the U.S. attorney general.

It also creates a process for the president to designate other social media companies from foreign adversary countries like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea as subject to the bill — meaning apps owned by designated companies that are distributed in the US would need to sever ties to continue operating there.

TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek said in a statement that the bill “is an outright ban of TikTok, no matter how much the authors try to disguise it. This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small business of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs.”

CBS News reported: For months, lawmakers have been warned of national security concerns posed by TikTok’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Last May, Montana became the first state in the nation to pass legislation banning TikTok entirely. However, that law is still facing legal challenges.

A new bipartisan House bill set for review by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on Thursday would require TikTok to divest from its Chinese-based owner ByteDance or risk a ban from app stores in the U.S.

“We implore ByteDance to sell TikTok so that its American users can enjoy their dance videos, bad lip sync, everything else that goes along with TikTok,” Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, one of the bill’s sponsors, said in a news conference Wednesday.

According to CBS News, there are growing fears the personal information TikTok devours from its users could fall into the hands of the Chinese government.

“The choice is up to TikTok,” Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington told CBS News. “They have a choice to make as to whether or not they want to remain with ByteDance, that we know is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.”

In my opinion, it might be a good idea to separate TikTok and ByteDance from it’s American users. From what I understand, US officials were warned to remove TikTok from their phones a while ago.

TikTok Begins Removing Universal Music Publishing Songs

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The bruising battle over royalties between Universal Music Group and TikTok entered a new and more severe stage in the early hours of Tuesday as songs published by UMG began to be removed from the platform, Variety reported.

The standoff, which began earlier this month, initially saw recordings owned or distributed by UMG removed from the platform, but now is extending to a much larger number of songs by including those published by the company.

The situation, accompanied by a bellicose war of words from both sides, pits UMG — the world’s largest music company — against TikTok — the most influential platform for promoting music for the past five years — as they continue to fail to renew their licensing agreement, which expired on Jan. 31.

According to Variety, the reach of this latest move is broad, as it effects a vast number of recordings not issued by a UMG-owned label, and many artists who have collaborated with songwriters under contract to Universal Music Publishing Group. Videos featuring those songs must either be removed from the platform or have the music on them muted.

TechCrunch reported TikTok is losing even more songs over its quarrel with Universal Music Group (UMG), as the social media network is starting to remove songs published by UMG, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Tuesday.

According to TechCrunch, the row between the two companies began last month when UMG announced that it failed to reach a deal with TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, over royalties. As a result, TikTok has to remove songs owned or distributed by UMG by January 31. Now, the company has to remove songs that contain compositions controlled by Universal Music Publishing Group.

TikTok says all songs that have been written or co-written by a songwriter signed to UMPG must be removed, and all videos that feature these songs must be muted. Videos that include impacted songs will still remain on the platform, but they won’t have any sound. The company says UMG and UMPG’s catalogue represents anywhere from 20-30% of popular songs on TikTok.

Mashable reported that Universal Music Group is back for more music. The music company will pull even more songs from TiKTok. At the beginning of the month, the deal between UMG and TikTok expired, and negotiations dissolved over royalties resulting in UMG removing all the music it owned or distributed from the platform.

Now, TikTok must take down all the songs controlled by Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), which includes any song that a UMG signed-artist wrote or co-wrote.

According to Mashable, TikTok estimates that UMG and UMPG owns 20 to 30 percent of the popular music on the platform. When a song is removed from TikTok, all the videos previously containing the song go silent — resulting in an eerily quiet FYP.

In my opinion, the lack of music from UMG on TikTok is going to make the platform less engaging. Who wants to watch music videos that have been silenced?

New Report Reaffirms TikTok’s Influence On Music Streaming

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A report commissioned by TikTok confirms what we’ve all known since the social media platform went mainstream in 2020: TikTok drives music streaming, Mashable reported.

Conducted by entertainment data and research company Luminate, the “Music Impact Report” boasts TikTok’s positive influence on the music industry. It found TikTok users are twice as likely to find and share new music on social and short-form video platforms. This finding is unsurprising considering songs often go viral on the platform as part of challenges that encourage viewers to make their own videos featuring the song.

According to Mashable, the “Music Impact Report” shared that TikTok engagement correlates with increased streaming numbers. This finding combined with TikTok’s new partnership with Spotify and Amazon Music “TikTok Music” – suggest the app aimed to further ingrain itself in the music industry.

Billboard reported that the study, commissioned by TikTok and conducted by Luminate, is full of statistics demonstrating TikTok’s power. First and foremost: “Higher TikTok engagement – whether that’s likes, views, or shares – corresponds with elevated streaming volumes.”

According to Billboard, this is why labels have been pestering their acts to post, post more, and post again, sometimes to their artists’ chagrin. On top of that, U.S. TikTokers “are nearly twice as likely to discover music on short-form video platforms than the average user of social media or social-form video platforms,” according to the study’s analysis.

Artists and labels all know that TikTok can galvanize an audience to share and stream and buy; what thy don’t know is how to trigger that activity. Spend on ads? Pay influencers? Pray? And maddeningly, even when songs do go viral on the app, some of them don’t turn into streaming hits at all.

Musically reported reported the findings from the report include the claim that TikTok users are “significantly more likely” to use a paid music streaming service than the average consumer, and that they spend “significantly more money” on music products (for example, merch and tickets) than the average listener.

While this isn’t quantified globally, the report does provide US stats. There, 62% of TikTok users pay for a streaming service compared to 43% of consumers over all.

Meanwhile, 38% of TikTok’s American users attended a live music event and 45% bought artist merch in the last year, compared to 33% and 35% respectively for overall music listeners.

The report also claims that TikTok users “have a stronger preference for international music than the average music listener.” That’s based on their answers to a question about whether they see ‘access to music by global artists’ as being extremely important for their choice of streaming service. 28% of TikTok’s US users said yes compared to 21% of overall listeners.

Considering all of this, it seems to me that there are a whole lot of music fans that prefer to listen to music on TikTok than on other music streaming services. This group also buys merchandise and tickets to music concerts.

European Regulators Fine TikTok $368M Over Failure To Protect Data of Young Users

TikTok

European authorities have found that Twitter had violated General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules when it comes to how it processes younger users’ personal data. Along with this decision, the regulator has revealed that it has slapped the social network with a €345 million ($368 million) fine, Engadget reported.

As the regulating body where TikTok is headquartered and where its first data center is located, the Irish Data Protection Commission investigated whether TikTok adhered to its privacy protection obligations for users between 13 and 17 years old between July 31 and December 31, 2020.

According to Engadget, the regulator found that TikTok allowed child users’ accounts to be paired with adult users’, without verifying whether that person is their parent or guardian. It even allowed that adult user to enable direct messaging for both of them, when the feature shouldn’t be available for the underage user.

The Guardian reported that the Irish data watchdog, which regulates TikTok across the EU, said the Chinese-owned video app had committed multiple breaches of GDPR rules.

According to The Guardian, the regulator found TikTok had contravened GDPR by: placing child users’ accounts on a public setting by default; allowing public comments on those accounts; not checking whether an adult given access to a child’s account on a “family pairing” scheme was a parent or guardian; and not properly taking into account the risks posed to under-13s on the platform who were placed in a public setting.

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) said users aged between 13 and 17 were steered through the sign-up process in a way that resulted in their accounts being set to public – meaning anyone can see an account’s content or comment on it – by default. It also found that the “family paring” scheme, which gives an adult control over a child’s account settings, did not check whether the adult “paired” with the child user was a parent or guardian.

The DPC ruled that TikTok, which has a minimum user age of 13, did not properly take into account the risk posed to underage users who gained access to the platform. It said the public-setting-by-default process allowed anyone to “view social media content posted by those users.”

TechCrunch reported that TikTok has been found to have violated the following eight articles of the GDPR: – aka breaches of lawfulness, fairness and transparency of data processing; data minimization; data security; responsibility of the controller; data protection by design and default; and the rights of the the subject (including minors) to receive clear communications about data processing; and to receive information on receipts of their personal data.

A TikTok spokesperson sent TechCrunch this statement:

“We respectfully disagree with the decision, particularly the level of the fine imposed. The DPC’s criticisms are focused features and settings that were in place three years ago, and that we made changes to well before the investigation even begun, such as setting all under 16 accounts to private by default.”

In my opinion, it sounds to me like TikTok is trying to absolve itself in the public eye by claiming that the features and settings in its app – that could potentially have harmed children and young teens – had changes made to it. That might be so, but it isn’t going to get TikTok out of having to pay the fine.