One-third of Britons worry that TikTok will share data with the Chinese government | Douyin

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Nearly a third of Britons worry Douyin According to a book on social networks, although the app is widely popular across the country, they may share their personal data with the Chinese government.

A third of Britons between the ages of 18 and 34 (the key population of the app) are not just worried: they trust TikTok to hand over their data at the request of the other party. China.

The findings are based on Opinium’s polls, which indicate that TikTok still has reputation issues, even if these issues are no longer serious enough to block the app’s Amazing growth.

Chris Stokel-Walker, author of TikTok Boom, said: “TikTok most strongly denies any allegations that it will share data with the Chinese government, and has been trying to prove its transparency for the past two years, but my book shows that the public does not buy it. .

Stokel-Walker said: “As we have seen in the struggle at its global headquarters, the continuous hearings of parliamentary special committees and its struggle for survival in the United States, the app is involved in a more important success than TikTok. “It is embroiled in a geopolitical scuffle between China and the rest of the world-events beyond its control are affecting public perceptions of how it operates in the most destructive way.”

Despite the concerns, TikTok continues to grow. According to data from mobile analytics company AppAnnie, in May of this year, British users of the Android version spent an average of nearly 25 hours on it, almost twice the time measured in December 2019. In contrast, YouTube owns around 17 hours a month, which explains why Google has invested a lot of energy in its local competitor, YouTube Shorts.

According to a recent report by Ofcom, TikTok is particularly popular among girls. 6% of British girls between the ages of 7 and 12 described it as their favorite app, second only to YouTube and Roblox. Among teenagers, 12% said it was their favorite, ranking it first, with Instagram and Snapchat ranking second and third. Among boys, the app ranks 7th among young people and 10th among teenagers, with 3% of them saying that this is their favorite app.

Even the nature of TikTok’s ownership is controversial: According to Stokel-Walker, half of the British describe it as a “Chinese-owned application”, and 5% disagree. The company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bytedance, which claims to be headquartered in the Cayman Islands. But Bytedance is one of China’s largest start-up companies, with 100,000 employees and annual revenue of nearly 40 billion U.S. dollars (nearly 29 billion pounds).

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