Highly addictive TikTok is allowed in UK but banned in China

If he wasn’t busy being the 47th US President, Donald Trump could be a full-time TikTok sensation. His distinctive dancing style is just the sort of short-form content that goes down a storm on the social media platform. Perhaps that is why he stepped in to save it following the ban introduced by his predecessor over TikTok’s links with the Chinese government?

More likely, the reprieve is down to his success using the site to get his message across and the leverage it gives him over America’s Silicon Valley tech tycoons. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg were both at the inauguration to offer allegiance to Trump and signal their willingness be part of his plans for America.

When Trump inevitably does threaten to switch off TikTok unless its owners sell a controlling share, Musk and Zuckerberg will be first in line to buy. But could it happen here? The UK Government says “we have no plans right now to ban TikTok” but that could change.

TikTok's algorithm decides what material you see and your poor brain is then left to sift the good from the bad and the ugly (Picture: Sebastien Bozon) | AFP via Getty Images

For nearly two years, TikTok has been banned from UK politicians’ and civil servants’ phones due to concerns the Chinese government could access their personal information. That alone should give us pause for thought but who needs personal privacy when you have the delights of the ice-bucket challenge at your fingertips?

There is another issue. Despite being created in China, TikTok isn’t available there. Instead the parent company ByteDance operates a similar but different platform, Douyin. While it focusses on fun educational facts to help educate young people, here TikTok promotes a very different kind of content.

Just this week an Albanian drug gang in London set up a TikTok account to offer a reward for information that could lead them to another gang captured on camera stealing their cocaine. That sits alongside endless videos promoting make-up to eight-year-old girls and material trying to shape how boys grow into men. Remember, self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate first shot to fame on TikTok where his videos have been watched over ten billion times.

The algorithm decides what material you see and your poor brain is then left to sift the good from the bad and the ugly and try to make sense of it all. It’s just not like that in China and that difference has been studied by Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Centre for Humane Technology.

“In their version of TikTok, they show you science experiments you can do at home, patriotism videos and educational videos. They make their domestic version a spinach version while they’ve shipped the opium version to the rest of the world,” he said.

The drug seems to be working with British youngers aged four to 18 spending an average of two hours a day on TikTok.

Last year’s Online Safety Bill was supposed to introduce better safeguarding but Ian Russell, father of Molly Russell, a teenager who took her own life after seeing harmful content, says it’s not being properly implemented by Ofcom and the UK is “going backwards” on internet safety.

The presence of Musk and Zuckerberg at a presidential inauguration shows us where the world is heading. It’s the job of government to regulate tech but if that isn’t working perhaps pulling the plug on TikTok would at least send a message that they are not in control... yet.