Starting at 10 AM EST, Wednesday, March 23, 2023: Full Hearing of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce –
“TikTok: How Congress Can Safeguard American Data Privacy and Protect Children from Online Harms”
In his keynote conversation with OODA CTO Bob Gourley at OODAcon 2022, Internet pioneer Vint Cerf validated for us what our research in 2022 was already surfacing and signaling. To paraphrase: “There is no one technological solution to misinformation – nor will there be. We have to improve our civic education. And the way people use their devices and their digital media literacy. That is the only solution.” We will be featuring further insights from this seminal OODAcon 2022 conversation throughout 2023.
We will also be more selective in our tracking of broad research efforts related to misinformation, disinformation, and information disorder, with a pivot towards tracking platforms and ecosystems which are delivering quantified results countering misinformation, et. al. This pivot is based on the insight (garnered from an OODA Network Monthly Meeting) that a layer of the “stack” will emerge (not unlike the antivirus software market over the last 30 years) to address these troubling -dis and misinformation threat vectors.
What remains discouraging is the fact that, as we all know, antivirus software was only one finger in the dam of the evolving cybersecurity climate in the late eighties and early nineties – and a whole suite of enterprise-level tools and platforms have since emerged to address the myriad of information threat vectors faced by organizations, especially corporate enterprise. So too, in 2023 technology startups will begin to address the ‘misinformation’ challenge – but, unfortunately to no avail strategically for our taste and for our level of understanding of the ongoing impact of and role of the problem. Still, we remain hopeful and will continue to provide curated research and analysis on the fits and starts of it all.
More importantly, the pointed insight offered at OODAcon by Cert about the future of misinformation, et. al. also validated the fact that OODA Loop and the OODA Network are a bit “ahead of the marketplace of ideas” in our insights about and evangelism of what was framed in the OODA Almanac 2023 as the “disruption of social integrity and cognitive infrastructure resiliency” – both of which are topics that we’ve covered steadily here at OODA Loop.
Disruption of Social Integrity and Cognitive Infrastructure Resiliency
We continue to track several thematics around the disruption of social integrity in the U.S. to include stress points like homelessness, crime, and under-reported risks like Fentanyl deaths. Fentanyl is of particular interest given the increasing number of deaths and the drug having strong ties to foreign illicit chemical supply chains including origination from China.
Cognitive infrastructure degradation and associated misinformation and influence campaigns also continue to be issues we will closely monitor in 2023 and beyond. Rather than build models for cognitive resilience including investment in education platforms, current initiatives are focused on platform banning which creates an environment of cat and mouse rather than addressing root causes.
Our world is becoming a house of mirrors as years of misinformation and disinformation and attacks on the credibility of institutions have eroded trust. Lines between fact and opinion are increasingly blurred in the media and sponsored content playbooks dominate what were previously technology-focused platforms. Distractions are prevalent and new platforms including the metaverse will encourage withdrawal from reality anytime and anywhere. Even our best approaches at conversational AI demonstrate inherent tendencies to manufacture facts and create a faux authority to include manufactured citations. This will create unprecedented challenges and the development of new technologies and approaches.
Signals and patterns encouraging us on this topic already in Q123 include cultural and operational shifts at Twitter and Meta (amongst other social media platforms), the activity at the Supreme Court related to the Future of Section 230, other upcoming federal regulatory responses and rulings, and the release of Richard Haass’ new book – The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens – which mirrors, aligns with and expands on some of Bob’s initial framing in his 2019 series of posts on America’s Cognitive Infrastructure:
“The ten obligations that Haass introduces here are essential for healing our divisions and safeguarding the country’s future. These obligations reenvision what it means to be an American citizen. They are not a burden but rather commitments that we make to fellow citizens and to the government to uphold democracy and counter the growing apathy, anger, selfishness, division, disinformation, and violence that threaten us all. Through an expert blend of civics, history, and political analysis, this book illuminates how Americans can rediscover and recover the attitudes and behaviors that have contributed so much to this country’s success over the centuries.” (b)
“TikTok: How Congress Can Safeguard American Data Privacy and Protect Children from Online Harms”
This full committee hearing today by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce is also on our radar:
On Thursday, March 23, 2023, at 10:00 a.m., the Committee on Energy and Commerce will hold a hearing in 2123 Rayburn House Office Building entitled “TikTok: How Congress Can Safeguard American Data Privacy and Protect Children from Online Harms”:
Shou Chew, CEO of TikTok Inc. will be testifying to the committee:
Shou Chew, CEO, TikTok Inc.
Why Tik Tok Matters
“TikTok is now one of the most popular social media platforms in the world. It is available in over 150 countries and serves over 1 billion users. In the United States, TikTok has been downloaded over 210 million times and is especially popular among teenagers and young adults.(4) The Washington Post reports that 2 out of 3 American teens have used the platform. (5) On average, American viewers spend 80 minutes per day watching TikToks.(6)
Hearing Background
“Beijing ByteDance Technology is a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Beijing and operating in the United States through a holding company (“ByteDance Ltd.”) incorporated in the Cayman Islands. (1) Beijing ByteDance Technology was formed in 2012 and launched a number of applications and products which became extremely popular in the Chinese market. Among these products is Douyin, a short-form video hosting service that launched in 2016. It attracted 100 million users in China and Thailand in less than a year. (2) In 2017, ByteDance launched Douyin internationally under the name TikTok. A year later, ByteDance acquired and merged Musical.ly – a social-media app with roughly 100 million users mainly in the U.S. – with TikTok, which at the time had approximately 500 million users outside China. This merger allowed ByteDance to consolidate its audiences on both apps and obtain a global reach, with Douyin in China and TikTok everywhere else. (3)
Consumer Privacy and Data Security
TikTok’s surveillance capacity and practices require scrutiny given the platform’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Despite numerous claims by TikTok executives that it does not share U.S. user data with the CCP, from 2014 to 2017 the CCP passed several laws requiring all Chinese tech companies to allow CCP officials access to user data.(7) ByteDance is no exception – all Chinese tech companies must comply with the demands of the CCP, which in some cases is a “require[ment] to build [their] networks in such a way as where the Chinese government has access.”(8)
The ambitious data collection goals of the CCP and the documented lack of transparency from TikTok and their executives over data and moderation practices have prompted governments, including the United States, the European Union, Canada, India, and several U.S. States (9) to ban the use of the application on government devices.(10) Past violations by TikTok and other Chinese-owned applications to protect user data, and China’s record of abuses in accessing Americans’ information, (11) led to the inclusion of restrictions on collection and use of data, increased data security obligations, further protections of children’s personal information, and disclosures on transfers and storage in China in the committee’s comprehensive privacy and data security legislation.” (a)
What Next?
America’s Most Critical Infrastructure is also Our Most Neglected Infrastructure
Ongoing Efforts to Combat Information Disorder and Strengthen our Cognitive Infrastructure
