TikTok, TikTok… time is running out for the popular app, at least in Canada.
It appears certain people have become alarmed at the amount of data the Chinese-based app collects. Recent news stories state Pierre Poilievre and Jagmeet Singh are among those who have suspended their TikTok accounts, as the Canadian ban against having the app on government devices kicks in.
The stories bring to mind one of the scare tactics popular among anti-vaxxers as COVID-19 vaccines became available, that “the government” (exactly which government was unspecified) was actually implanting tracking devices in us, not immunizing us.
The favoured tongue-in-cheek response was that with the amount of information we freely share about ourselves on social media, tracking devices were redundant.
It seems that bit of humour is coming back to bite us. We may have laughed about the great tracking device conspiracy, but TikTok is the real deal.
Those of us who are of a certain age may recall a time when oversharing personal information was frowned on. Certain topics of conversation were pretty much off-limits – one’s salary, political views and/or religious beliefs, for example. Anything involving sex or body fluids was simply not discussed in polite company. People would actually leave town if information about a philandering spouse or a relative’s gambling got out.
Today? Anything goes.
Folks discuss their most recent sordid fling, court-ordered rehab or encounters with “Karens” (apologies to the many nice people named Karen) with great enthusiasm, whether in person or on social media.
People happily blog about their ongoing feud with little Junior’s idiot teacher, the new outfit they shoplifted, or the medically-approved weight loss program their sister-in-law’s friend’s fiancé’s psychic swears by. They post vast numbers of photos that in an earlier age, would have been fodder for blackmail.
Anyone with a modest familiarity with the internet can find out enough about a person in a few minutes to defraud them of thousands of dollars. Scammers have no need for extraordinary hacking skills to ferret out information by nefarious means – we put it all out there for them, a veritable electronic smorgasbord for those cyber-cockroaches.
Most of us are aware that Facebook, YouTube and – yes – TikTok collect data. In the case of TikTok, it is a huge amount of data. The only question is, for what purpose? It need not be for an old-fashioned military assault and government takeover; attacking a country’s economy can be every bit as devastating.
The decision to treat TikTok as a potential enemy tool is probably long overdue, from a national security point of view.
It might be time to refer back to a Second World War campaign aimed at stopping thoughtless and dangerous sharing of information: “Loose lips sink ships.”
According to Wikipedia, the slogan was the work of the War Advertising Council in the United States. The British version was “Careless talk costs lives.” Germany had its own slogan, that could be roughly translated as, “Shame on you, blabbermouth.”
What about our personal security? Surely, our privacy is worth protecting. Perhaps the Luddites who decline to share every facet of their lives with the world via social media are not techno-throwbacks, but people ahead of their time.
Perhaps dumping TikTok is a first step in a renewed interest in privacy, the beginning of a new era in which we can have a conversation without any airing of soiled linen, so to speak.
There is something to be said for open and honest communication, but there is a very thin line between that, and oversharing. Most of us can recall a conversation or three that made us want to poke our fingers in our ears and repeat “TMI” loudly.
The line may be thin, but most of us know when it has been crossed. Do we really want to put out potentially damaging information for everyone to see, for all time, from the Chinese government to a future employer to the love of our life we have yet to meet?
Loose lips sink ships.
