TikTok’s Chinese Ownership Adds to Scrutiny in Taiwan Vote

Betty Hou and Sarah Zheng
·7 min read
1

(Bloomberg) -- Scroll through TikTok in Taiwan, and you’ll find a rolling stream of videos covering the heated campaign for next January’s presidential election.

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That’s making the island the next battleground in the war over political disinformation and the debate over whether China’s government can manipulate the popular app to its advantage — a concern shared in Washington ahead of the 2024 US election.

TikTok isn’t the most used social media platform on the island — Facebook and YouTube have more daily visitors — and disinformation cuts across social media apps. But TikTok’s Chinese ownership and its status as the fastest-growing app is drawing scrutiny as campaigning gets underway.

“The risk level of disinformation on a platform comes from its popularity, and for TikTok, that’s only growing,” said Billion Lee, co-founder of the Taiwanese fact-checking platform Cofacts.

Sensing a potential threat, authorities in Taiwan already barred TikTok from government-issued devices, in line with moves by countries including the US. Now they are weighing national security and free speech concerns before deciding whether to go further.

In a statement to Bloomberg, the company said it complies with laws and regulations wherever it works and has policies to combat disinformation and “prevent misuse of the platform.”

“We are proactively reaching out to the relevant government agencies to share how TikTok protects user data and counters misinformation,” according to the statement. That includes “confirming the authenticity of accounts of political figures and parties with the relevant individuals and organizations.”

The stakes are high heading into next year’s vote. US-China tensions have soared the past year, with Taiwan often at the center of those strains. Whoever wins could help influence how that relationship evolves in the years ahead.

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Given its importance to China and its ties to the US, Taiwan “has long been used as a testing ground for disinformation,” said Robin Lee, project manager of the fact-checking platform MyGoPen.

Tsai Ming-yen, the head of Taiwan’s national security bureau, said this month that his agency reviewed more than 1,800 cases of online disinformation and disputed information across several platforms, including Facebook and YouTube. He said that was 1,400 more than the same period last year and that he expected those figures to keep rising.

After TikTok was banned from government devices, some officials argued it should be barred from the island entirely, but that appears to be a minority view for now.

“Taiwan must be very cautious when we make this decision,” said Lo Ping-cheng, the minister in charge of the government’s internal discussions on regulating TikTok. “There is no timetable set for a decision so far.”

TikTok has already proven itself an influential platform in major elections. In Malaysia last year, conservative religious parties used the app to attract younger voters who helped them score some key upsets. On the other end of the political spectrum, Thailand’s progressive Move Forward party outperformed pre-election polls in May, in part through more effective use of the app.

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In the US and Europe, TikTok faces an existential crisis over worries that its feed can be manipulated for political purposes and that user data can be accessed by its Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance Ltd., on behalf of the Chinese government.

The company has repeatedly denied it receives data requests from Beijing. In its statement to Bloomberg, it added that “Taiwanese user data is stored in the U.S., Singapore and Malaysia.”

With campaigning in Taiwan underway, one viral video, which garnered almost 900,000 views, highlights the challenge authorities face. The clip accused Vice President Lai Ching-te — the ruling party’s presidential candidate — of risking citizens’ lives in a potential war with China, while alleging his children would be protected because they live in the US and are American citizens. The party has repeatedly said the clip is false.

“Taiwanese people, it’s time to wake up,” the narrator says on the video, hosted on an account run by a 32-year-old Taiwanese engineer who posts under the pseudonym “Citizen V.” That’s a nod to the film V for Vendetta and its message of protesting political tyranny.

The clip was flagged in May by contributors at Cofacts for containing misinformation. After that designation, it was taken down, but by then it had circulated for more than a month. Officials are concerned a rising tide of misleading information will confound the ability of organizations and the government to stop them all.

Cofacts and MyGoPen are part of a constellation of non-profits focused on disinformation who say they are funded by individual donations and foundations, separate from any political party or group.

In an interview, “Citizen V” — who asked not to be identified by his real name — said he was frustrated that his video was singled out. He said he doesn’t see himself as peddling in disinformation but he does want to be an influencer in the election. And he found TikTok to be the best venue for getting his posts — many in support of former Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je of the Taiwan People’s Party — to a wider audience.

Now the blogger has more than 48,000 followers and about 18 million views in the past two months on TikTok.

Citizen V’s case highlights the difficulty in separating heated rhetoric and misleading claims — part of elections everywhere — from state-sponsored disinformation.

Officials in Taipei have been warning since March about “large-scale” operations from China that seek to interfere with the election, an issue the government has long experience with.

Taiwanese agencies faced a record number of cyberattacks after then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited in August. Between Pelosi’s trip and local elections last November, the Taipei-based organization Doublethink Lab recorded nearly 3,000 instances of targeted disinformation.

“The most common tactic by China is to create greater confrontation between the major parties,” said Puma Shen, chairperson of Doublethink Lab, which tracks online disinformation. “Their main purpose is to undermine trust in Taiwan.”

And while false information is prevalent across Taiwanese social media, usage of TikTok significantly impacts whether people in Taiwan view China positively or negatively, said Shen.

In a report on its website, TikTok said that last year it discovered an influence network of inauthentic accounts operating from Taiwan that primarily targeted Taiwanese audiences to “create a high number of derogatory comments in addition to sharing content in Traditional Chinese targeting civic discourse in Taiwan.” The network had amassed more than 60,000 followers before it was discovered internally and removed, the report said.

Another combative and popular political TikTok account is “Taiwan Strait Number One Brother,” which posts videos promoting China’s People’s Liberation Army and criticizing the US. The majority of its nearly 700 posts are dubbed or subtitled in simplified Chinese, rather than the traditional form commonly used in Taiwan — a sign security experts say signals the content may be generated in China.

A person involved in managing the account declined to comment beyond saying that they were based outside of Taiwan.

Cybersecurity experts say it’s not easy to identify whether TikTok accounts are run by real-life political supporters or backed by a state, but the threat of election-related disinformation campaigns will only grow.

“We’re seeing more conspiracy-type information that is a lot harder to fight back on,” said Robin Lee, project manager at MyGoPen. “A potential invasion sounds very scary, but is also something that could happen in the future — that you cannot actually fact-check.”

--With assistance from Zheping Huang.

(Adds TikTok report in fifth-to-last paragraph.)

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