TikTok Tracked Users Who Watched Gay Content

Chinese social media app TikTok has allegedly been keeping a log of its users watching gay content on its platform for at least a year, according to former employees of the company.

According to the Wall Street Journal, former employees raised several concerns over the platform’s alleged practice of recording its users who watched gay content as it could be used to identify LGBTQI users and put them at risk of blackmail in cases of leaks or breach of their privacy via third-party data collections. 

The social media platform allows users to engage in content creation and video-sharing of up to ten minutes per video. As of December last year, the company reported 689 million people using the app worldwide. 

There have been serious privacy concerns, with greater calls for transparency in tech and social-media conglomerates, including Facebook, Twitter, Uber and Snapchat. 

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before the US Congress in March 2023, after calls for a law to ban the social media platform.

Last month, the Australian government banned the use of the app on government devices. Similar bans have been imposed in the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand.

TikTok Catalogued Users Who Watched Gay Videos

While TikTok does not ask users to disclose their sexual orientation when they first sign up to use the app, the platform catalogued videos that users watched under topics including, LGBTQI. This collection of information and personal data from its users could then be viewed by some employees through a dashboard and involved documenting affiliated users and their ID numbers. 

Previously, TikTok has been involved in public controversy over its management of personal security and privacy, with other employees flagging issues with people’s data being shared with third parties or that information could be used to blackmail users, reported The Wall Street Journal. 

A spokeswoman from TikTok assured The Wall Street Journal that the dashboard which employees used to access data on watchers of gay content was deleted almost a year ago and that the app did not identify any potentially sensitive information like a user’s sexual orientation or race. 

“Safeguarding the privacy and security of people who use TikTok is one of our top priorities,” TikTok said in a statement. 

Dangers of TikTok’s Data Mining

Last year, a report by Australian-US cybersecurity firm Internet2.0 issued warnings to TikTok users after finding that the app collected “excessive” information from its customers. 

“When the app is in use, it has significantly more permissions than it really needs. It grants those permissions by default. When a user doesn’t give it permission… [TikTok] persistently asks,” co-CEO of Internet 2.0 Robert Potter said in the report. 

Tom Kenyon, non-executive director of cybersecurity firm Internet 2.0 told The Feed that the app was collecting “a whole bunch of information that it doesn’t need to run”. 

“TikTok also tracks what other apps you have running on your phone, has access to your clipboard which could contain passwords, logs your keystrokes, and collects location data so precise, it knows how high above sea level you are”, Mr Kenyon said.

Concerns Over App’s Handling Of Sensitive Data

In the United States, Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission of the United States Brendan Carr has raised concerns over TikTok’s “harvesting swathes of sensitive data” and called for the Council on Foreign Investment in the U.S (CFIUS) to ban the app. 

The former TikTok employees told The Wall Street Journal that the company organises the suite of videos into “clusters”, grouped by topics including but not limited to: “mainstream female, alt female, white-collar male”. These clusters are further divided into subgroups. For example, for ‘alt female’, the sub-groups included ‘tattoos’ and ‘lesbian content’. 

The data collected involving users’ viewing preferences is tracked in a bid for the company to understand trends and increase engagement. While the content tagging system has been adjusted from labels to being identified via numbers, there are still major concerns considering the rise of homophobic and transphobic attacks in the United States.