The Security Challenges for the "Tiktok" Application

The number of internet users has increased around the world. Therefore, social media become the most preferable communication tools for expressing viewpoints and comments of people and sharing their information and daily life events with friends. Moreover, social media offer many privacy options for users, such as: private groups, private conversation, public group, or public page. Persons from different areas can exchange viewpoints and opinions and make discussions. Accordingly, members of terrorist groups and extremist organizations consider social media as one of the best effective ways for promoting their misleading thoughts, attracting new advocates, and making permanent and secure communications with other people.

TikTok is considered one of the most recent and famous social media applications. It is used by some terrorist and extremist groups in many countries around the world. This creates security challenges and threatens social and moral values. Therefore, it is important to record all security, community, and moral challenges in terms the highly increasing number of this application users in the Arab region.  

In this regard, ADL Center on Extremism indicates that extremists utilize TikTok for sharing contents that promote hatred and recruit advocates and new members. They adopt some techniques for conveying their messages through videos which they share, such as adding connotations on screens, directing followers to an external content through links outside of TikTok application, highlighting signs or books for expressing their viewpoints during playback of videos, and using hashtags for increasing their audience.   

It is known that TikTok attracts an increasing number of users, most of them are youth and teenagers, in the Arab region. Factors of this attraction may be summarized as follow:

• Rich, diverse, and attractive content of TikTok
• Effective role of TikTok in supporting personal expression of youth and teenagers through short videos
• Youth ability to create big and extended social networks of followers via TikTok.

However, excessive usage of TikTok may subject its users to social risks that create threats affecting both personal security and community security, in addition to security challenges associated with national security of Arab countries.

From the abovementioned, we can summarize the theme and research problem of the report as follow:

• Exploring security challenges and social and moral risks associated with TikTok usage in Arab world countries.
• Identifying the most optimal policies for dealing with challenges originating from TikTok.

Report Objectives and Approach

We can highlight the report theme in some questions that need to be answered by the report. These questions are as follow:

- What are security challenges associated with using TikTok by some terrorist groups in the Arab region?

- What are social and moral risks associated with using TikTok?

- What are the optimal policies for encountering security challenges and dealing with social and moral risks associated with using TikTok in the Arab region?

The report adopts the integration approach that combines some suitable methods and tools. It is considered an explorative report on the nature and dimensions of the report theme. The most important methods adopted by the report can be indicated as follow: 

• Secondary Data Analysis Method: This method is applied on some relevant studies and reports to identify the most critical social and moral risks that represent challenges for community security of our Arab societies.
• Qualitative Analysis of Content: This method is applied on a purposive sample of videos that include hate and violence speeches or are disseminated by some members of terrorist and extremist groups. It monitors disseminated speeches and thoughts and focuses on techniques that are utilized on TikTok. Moreover, this method is supported with videography methodology by linking standard analysis with interpretative analysis of videos. Analysis of videos is made on two levels: the most linked, and the most liked. Accordingly, each keyword incudes 20 videos that are analyzed into many categories such as:
  • Secondary topics
  • Persuasive methods
  • Interaction level
  • Account type

Concerning reference of the analysis process, the analysis depends on two patterns: the first pattern one is associated with rational persuasion while the second one is associated with emotional persuasion. 

Report Findings and Recommendations

The report findings affirm that TikTok has been the most growing application during the recent period. TikTok attracts a big number of people who are more than one billion active users around the world and most of them are teenagers and young youth. Recently, an increasing activity of extremist groups and terrorist organizations has been noticed on TikTok. This increasing activity of these groups and organizations is not apparent to most users of application. The report indicates that there is an activity of terrorist and extremist organizations and some of their members in the Arab region on TikTok. This can be recognized by the big number of videos, images, and indications that promote terrorism and violence and disseminate hate speeches, fake news, and disinformation in a manner that creates direct and indirect threats on national security of Arab countries. Although these threats may also originate from other social media applications, they become more dangerous on TikTok which includes distinctive features that make such threats more disturbing for security agencies. Moreover, most users of TikTok application are young people who are credulous when dealing with any content violating security measures. The following points summarizes the most critical security challenges that are highlighted by the report:   

• Excessive usage of TikTok results in many challenges that negatively affect community security and its basic elements in the Arb region. TikTok videos that promote traditions and customs that are not suitable to Arab values may lead to some moral deviations and crimes. This may cause a medium-range moral weakness on two aspects: the first aspect represented by deviation forms shown by videos on TikTok, while the second one is related to negative impacts of immoral content of TikTok videos. This may lead to social fragmentation, distancing, and isolation.
• TikTok usage is associated with the gradual appearance of depression and behavioral disorders symptoms among teenagers. According to a research study, some videos on TikTok (like dangerous challenge videos) may promote Non-Suicidal Self Injury (NSSI) and lead to loss of appetite among some TikTok users. These consequences originate in terms of the increasing number of TikTok users who tend to imitate some practices which are published via TikTok videos.
• Regarding security challenges resulting from TikTok usage, they are represented by growing concerns about privacy, security, and application permissions. In this context, the privacy policy of TikTok application explicitly states that: “TikTok application may share user’s data with our parent company, affiliate, or other companies in the same group as TikTok”. There are also security concerns regarding amount of information and personal data collected by the application through its permissions. In case the collected data belong to users who work at security or military agencies, they will be sensitive information that has a serious effect on national security of countries.
• Increasing usage of TikTok application creates challenges on national security of countries. TikTok publishes contents that disseminate misleading information about some events associated with the Arab countries in a manner that threatens their national security.
• Security challenges are also represented in the increasing activity of some terrorist and violent organizations and their members on TikTok. They can utilize all TikTok features for disseminating a content promoting violence, hatred, and terrorism and may displease some users regarding some events that occur in their countries.
• In addition to the abovementioned points, TikTok includes some advantages that may be employed for strengthening national and community security and promoting loyalty values among Arab youth. Accordingly, Arab official institutions, whether they are security or non-security entities, should create TikTok accounts to deliver objective and moderate speech that encounters any content disseminating fake news and disinformation that negatively affect national security of countries.

According to the report findings that have been obtained by reviewing studies and reports on TikTok, exploring most important international practices that are applied to encounter security risks and challenges associated with social media in general and with TikTok in particular, and examining updates approved by TikTok regarding community guidelines, we can indicate some relevant recommendations as follow:   

• Concerned Arab governmental institutions (such as Arab ministries of communications and interior and the Arab Interior Ministers Council (AIMC)) should seek to take regulatory measures that start with enacting public laws and regulations and setting self-regulation frames on the Arab level. Accordingly, activities on social media applications, such as TikTok, may be controlled and regulated.
• AIMC should coordinate with owners of social media applications or with their regional offices in the middle east to set Arab code of practice, like EU code of practice, on disinformation and immoral content. This code will assist in regulating all social media platforms to take their community responsibilities. It will also motivate owners of social media applications to make efforts for encountering dissemination of any content that affects or threatens national or community security of Arab countries. Subsequently, a more transparent, safer, and reliable digital environment can be created. The code of practice will also seek to set procedures that can be taken for addressing security challenges associated with immoral content, disinformation, and dissemination of hate and violence speeches. The proposed main objectives and obligations of code of practice may demonstrated be as follow:
  • Policies for preventing dissemination of immoral contents, misleading information, or extremism and violence speeches should be included in the proposed Arab code of practices. They should state punishments for preventing any user who makes or promotes immoral or misleading contents from advertising revenues.
  • TikTok algorithms should be enhanced to monitor any content that violates public morals, disseminates fake news and disinformation, or threatens national security of countries. Although TikTok developed its policies and removed millions of videos, a huge number of non-suitable videos, particularly those in Arabic language, still exists on the application.
  • TikTok advertising content should be monitored in a better way to reduce revenues gained by immoral content creators and misleading information providers.
  • Transparency and accountability policies should be developed to improve integrity of TikTok services.
  • A mechanism should be set for ensure commitment to and implementation of code of practice objectives.

Arab government and security institutions should pay attention to set rules for regulating their affiliates usage of TikTok and other similar applications. In this regard, the report suggests two main types of policies as follow:  

• Acceptable Use Policies: Each institution can set clear policies for categorizing applications into permissible and forbidden applications and obligating its affiliates to follow these policies.

- Encryption Policies: It is important for each government or security institution to follow a policy that prevents storing important and secret data on non-encrypted devices or making videos about or inside institution without a security permission.