by Lee Hunter, General Manager of Operations, TikTok AUNZ.

The decision to single out TikTok for a ban on government devices was illogical, unjust and unsupported by any evidence. We understand that departments and agencies may want to limit which platforms their employees can access on work-issued phones and computers. As anyone with a Government-issued phone knows, there are already broad restrictions in place on the kinds of apps that can be accessed - usually for good reason.

Many years back I worked for YouTube when the website was banned from government networks to stop employees wasting time at work. But the reason I am so disappointed by this latest decision is because TikTok has been singled out for special punishment without any explanation or consultation. I believe that in a fair, democratic society, global digital companies should be held to the same standards and treated equally. We should be judged on our policies and practices in an objective and dispassionate way. For example, if the government is truly concerned about user data, why has it not restricted platforms that collect just as much or more data than TikTok such as Facebook, Instagram and Google?

Unfortunately it’s because TikTok has been unfairly caught up in broader political tensions between the West and China simply because we were founded by Chinese entrepreneurs. As these tensions have grown, there has been a cascade of misinformation and wild accusations circulated about us, particularly overseas but also in Australia. Regrettably these false claims - which I’ll discuss in a moment - have overpowered the fact that TikTok has proved incredibly useful to politicians and public servants as a means of communicating with the millions of Australians who love the app.  

This was evident during the COVID-19 pandemic when some of our Chief Medical Officers developed strong fan bases on the platform and we even partnered with the New South Wales Department of Health to livestream daily updates. During recent federal and state election campaigns, politicians have used TikTok to interact with younger voters and many have vowed to continue doing so after building up significant followings. TikTok has also proved invaluable to thousands of small business owners who make a living on the platform, injecting millions of dollars into the economy. But in recent weeks we have been attacked with all sorts of false allegations, including by federal government ministers and shadow ministers who should know better. These fallacies are based on fears about China rather than any truth about our app.

So it’s worth setting the record straight. First and foremost, we are not controlled or owned by the Chinese government or the Chinese Communist Party. Our parent company ByteDance is a private company majority owned by global institutional investors, many of whom are American. Our global headquarters are in Singapore and the US, where Australian user data is securely stored in line with the highest industry standards. We do not share any data with the Chinese government, which, by the way, cannot compel another sovereign nation to provide data stored in that nation's territory. Like many Australian and global companies, we have some employees based in China. But the idea that any China-based employee of an Australian company is somehow compromised or has nefarious purposes is at best unfair and at worst xenophobic. If the location of some employees is the government’s concern, then let’s have that conversation without unjustly singling out TikTok for political purposes. Some of Australia’s largest companies, including the big banks and major telcos, openly state in their privacy policies they share data with their Chinese operations - and many hold much more sensitive data than us. In terms of data, we collect no more than our peers, such as Facebook and Instagram. The data we collect is used to give Australians a safe and enjoyable time on the app. Things like their email, their age to ensure they are over 13, and their content preferences to give them the entertainment experience that suits them. We don’t collect sensitive information such as biometric data to identify people, and we do not collect precise GPS location data. Phone contacts can only be accessed if a user clicks “yes” when asked. And when it comes to safety and content moderation, we are leading the pack.

We have recently rolled out new safety features including family pairing, maximum screen time for teens, and a ban on TikTok live for under 18s. We have more than 40,000 dedicated trust and safety professionals who remove content that breaches our strict community guidelines, mostly before a single person has laid eyes on it. I've worked in this industry for 17 years, including at Google and YouTube, and I'm seeing no other company invest as much in safety and transparency as TikTok. Alongside huge investments in data security centres, we are allowing third party auditors in the US to interrogate the code that runs our algorithms.

Lastly, I must completely dismiss the absurd and fanciful idea that TikTok pushes propaganda or censors content on behalf of the Chinese government. This is easy to prove because TikTok contains countless videos about topics sensitive to the CCP - take a look yourself if you don't believe me. TikTok is built on the idea that users are given the content they love. The more of that we can deliver, the more they want to engage. It would be impossible to feed Chinese government propaganda without users and our own teams noticing.

So my message to Australian governments is this: We are a much-loved entertainment app that has been unfairly dragged into a broader geo-political debate. We should not be singled out based on short-term politics or basic misconceptions about how the internet works.   The millions of TikTok users, including those whose small businesses have boomed and whose creativity has been exported around the world, deserve so much better.