Georgia - Political parties are resorting to TikTok, the online content-sharing platform popular among teenagers, not for promoting dance videos or singing but for political campaigns.
Wade Herring, a Democrat running for Congress in Georgia, US said she was approached by a teenage voter at a restaurant over the weekend. The young man knew Herring, from the campaign videos on TikTok!
For Herring, a 63-year-old Savannah attorney, it was a testament to TikTok's well-guided ability to reach young voters — a reason why he and candidates in both parties have enthusiastically embraced the platform ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
"A year and a half ago, I thought it was just dancing videos," Herring said of TikTok. Young voters, he added, “aren't watching CNN, or MSNBC or Fox. They’re getting their information on TikTok, and for better or worse, it’s the way to reach them.”
TikTok's popularity has surged despite worries from policymakers in Washington about TikTok's handling of user data and misinformation, as well as its ties to China's government. Those fears prompted the U.S. armed forces to prohibit the app on military devices and spurred calls to ban it on all government computers and phones.
"I have serious concerns about the opportunities that the Chinese communist party has to access TikTok's data on American users," Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said at a monthly hearing focused on the national security implications of social media.
Two-thirds of American teens use TikTok, even as experts point to safety concerns.
It is the most downloaded app in the world and the second most visited website after Google.
TikTok is owned by ByteDance Ltd., a Chinese company that moved to its new headquarters in Singapore in 2020. Questions about the company's ties to the Chinese government have hounded TikTok even as its popularity exploded.
TikTok Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Pappas, based in Los Angeles, said the company protects all data from American users and that Chinese government officials have no access to it.
TikTok also says it works to stop the flow of harmful misinformation and has created an election center to help users find information about U.S. elections, voting and candidates.
The platform's defenders also note that TikTok isn't the only site criticized for failing to stop misinformation. Its rivals — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube — face their own challenges regarding data privacy too.
TikTok is not available in China. Instead, the platform's parent company offers a similar platform that has the same dance videos, but also promotes educational content about math and science, experts told lawmakers at the recent Senate hearing. Another difference: the Chinese version limits 13- and 14-year-old users to 40 minutes a day. No such limits are included in the U.S. version, which prohibits users under 13.