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All major Western social media apps have been banned in China for over a decade.
But the Great Wall of China, ostensibly implemented to protect national interests, was not as effective as Beijing hoped.
Many Chinese are still active on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
The biggest impact of the ban is to give China’s own social media platforms such as TikTok (known as Douyin in China) and WeChat a competitive advantage.
Currently, it is Western countries such as Australia that are weighing what to do with Chinese social media apps, amid concerns that the personal data they collect could be accessed by Beijing.
So how should the federal government deal with technology associated with authoritarian states such as China?
Should Australia follow China’s lead and ban them outright?
become a technological powerhouse
Beijing’s ban on Western apps has given domestic tech platforms exclusive access to one billion Chinese internet users.
Since taking office in 2012, President Xi Jinping has taken a keen interest in expanding China’s ambitions to become a “cyber superpower.”
Xi not only stepped up online censorship, but also launched the World Internet Conference to promote cybersecurity and development.
The president’s backing sparked an overnight boom in tech platforms as hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese capital poured into thousands of startups, setting the stage for the rapid growth of apps like TikTok and WeChat.
Owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, TikTok currently has more than 1 billion users worldwide, including an estimated 7.38 million Australians, but the Chinese version has over 500 million users. increase.
The platform has become one of the most downloaded apps worldwide and is growing faster than US social media giants Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.
WeChat’s main user group is Chinese-speaking immigrants, while TikTok’s users are large and predominantly young in Australia.
However, both apps raise privacy and security concerns.
WeChat is a Facebook-like social media platform with approximately 1.29 billion monthly active users worldwide, mainly in China.
We use a “one app, two systems” approach to distinguish between different levels of censorship and local data storage for international and domestic accounts based on the international phone number associated with the account.
By contrast, TikTok is a completely separate app from the Chinese version of Douyin.
ByteDance claims that its TikTok user data is not stored in China, but instead on servers in Singapore and the United States.
However, analysts have questioned the company’s claims that it does not share data with Beijing.
Consider options
Home Secretary Claire O’Neill has asked her department to investigate reports that TikTok, WeChat and other social media companies are collecting user data and report next year on options on how to address the issue. Did.
Liberal Senator James Patterson said the government shouldn’t rule out banning China-based social media companies by then.
This is not the first time Australia has blackballed a Chinese company.
The Turnbull government banned Chinese tech company Huawei from being involved in Australia’s 5G rollout in 2018, citing national security reasons.
In the United States, former President Donald Trump labeled TikTok and WeChat threats to national security and called on the government to ban them in 2020.
That attempt failed in court, but debate continues over whether to ban TikTok and WeChat.
Meanwhile, India has banned both, along with another 57 Chinese-made apps, citing privacy and security compliance.
all app issues
Robert Potter, a cybersecurity expert who co-founded Canberra-based consultancy Internet 2.0, says the government should set standards that apply to all social media platforms rather than ban individual apps. said.
He said the app that collected the data of Chinese people was controlled and could be subject to authoritarian states.
“But there are problems that exist across the spectrum of social media and different platforms,” he said.
Potter said app platforms Google Play and Apple’s App Store should share the responsibility of maintaining privacy and security standards with governments.
“In this case, we can ensure that all social media platforms behave in a way that is in line with our expectations,” he said.
regulation and education
Lennon Zhang, a cybersecurity and cybercrime expert at Monash University, said the Chinese app has real data security issues.
“Dictatorships have less checks and balances than democracies when it comes to protecting privacy,” Chan said.
He noted that the Australian Defense Force banned employees from using TikTok in 2020 for national security reasons.
“Democracies should use laws to regulate the use of data by all technology companies, rather than banning specific countries or apps,” Chan said.
Facebook and YouTube have also been accused of abusing user privacy in the past.
He said the Australian government needs to do more education for its citizens, especially young people, on how to protect their privacy.
“Democracies should treat technology platforms made in authoritarian countries the same way they do, by law, not by bans like those used by authoritarian governments,” he said. rice field.
Ideological issues aside, banning TikTok and WeChat would also have significant implications for Australian interests, he said.
TikTok has given Australian youth a platform to showcase the country’s soft power on the world stage.
WeChat is the only practical way for Australia’s approximately 1.4 million overseas Chinese to communicate with their contacts, family and friends in China.
And, as Beijing discovered, people will still find ways to use them.
“Even if a ban exists, some users will continue to use it in their own way because it is irreplaceable,” Chan said.
“After the ban is imposed, it will be harder for governments to regulate these platforms, exposing their users to greater risks.”
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