Elon Musk Raises Alarm on Potential Threat of Social Media: ‘Is TikTok Destroying Civilization?’

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is currently in the process of purchasing Twitter, asked if the popular video-sharing app TikTok is "destroying civilization." He would follow up the tweet by questioning whether social media, in general, is to blame.

Elon Musk made the tweets following a response he made on Twitter regarding a report that TikTok's Chinese parent company, Bytedance, has repeatedly accessed private data from TikTok users in the United States. The company has already faced scrutiny from U.S. politicians over its Chinese ties.

Fox Business requested a comment from TikTok about Musk's recent tweets, but a spokesperson for the company did not respond immediately.

Elon Musk Wants Twitter To Be More Like China's WeChat

Fox Business also reports that during an all-hands meeting on Thursday, Musk told Twitter staff his thoughts on TikTok and the Chinese instant messaging and social media app, WeChat. Musk admitted he finds that TikTok "does a great job of making sure you're not bored," even if he also admitted that he finds some of the videos on the platform to be "offensive."

Musk also stated that TikTok has "honed the algorithm to be as engaging as possible," and wants Twitter to be just as engaging, albeit in a different way. He would go on to say that TikTok is indeed interesting but states that he also feels that people should be informed about serious issues as well.

In regards to WeChat, Musk believes Twitter has the opportunity to become the Western equivalent of the app, which was developed by Chinese media giant Tencent.

In his statement during the meeting, Musk said, "You basically live on WeChat in China because it's so helpful, so useful to daily life."

He added, "I think if we achieve that or come even close to that with Twitter, that would be a success."

U.S. Tiktok Employees Were Not Permitted Access To User Data, But Chinese Employees Were

Buzzfeed News reports that 80 internal meetings have shown that China-based employees of ByteDance have had repeated access to private data of TikTok users from the United States.

According to Buzzfeed News, which was the first to report on the leaks, the recordings contained 14 statements from nine different TikTok employees that Chinese engineers have had access to private data from the United States between September 2021 and January 2022. This is despite a Tiktok executive's sworn testimony during a Senate hearing back in October 2021 that a "world-renowned US-based security team" are the ones who decide which people have access to the private data.

The leaks also showed that while Chinese employees had access to the said data, U.S.-based employees did not. Fox News also pointed out that ByteDance is required under Chinese law to share its data with the Chinese Communist Party (CPP).

A member of TikTok's Trust and Safety department also told Buzzfeed News that "everything is seen in China."

TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan released a statement in response to the various security issues, acknowledging the scrutiny the company is facing. She says that the company aims to remove any doubt about the security of U.S. data. This includes hiring experts, as well as continuing to work to validate their security standards and working with third parties to secure their defenses.

TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, has yet to issue a statement regarding the leaks.

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Rick Martin

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