UK Security Minister Tom Tugendhat Warns of CCP’s Influence on Youth Through TikTok

Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat speaking to the media at an event in Biggin Hill Airport in London on July 30, 2022. Henry Nicholls/PA Media

Britain’s Security Minister Tom Tugendhat has warned that in the run-up to the next general election large numbers of young voters will be getting their news from TikTok whose editorial board, he said, is comprised of members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Giving a speech at the Policy Exchange think tank in London on Tuesday, entitled “Defending Democracy in an Age of State Threats,” Tugendhat warned Russia, China, and Iran were all pushing false narratives on social media.

He said: “We’re not just dealing with competing narratives today. We’re dealing with false ones.”

Tugendhat said it was “essential for our freedom” that there are political debates about laws and constitutional matters, and he said, “We should argue and disagree.”

But he added: “What is critical is that we should know where the arguments are coming from. We should know that these debates are triggered by the interests of our nation and our communities, by the people we should rightly be representing. We shouldn’t be having them triggered by outside forces and the hidden hand. For too long foreign interference has been slowly creeping into British democracy.”

After the 2016 Brexit referendum there were widespread claims that Russia had influenced the debate in favour of Leave, using an army of bots and trolls on social media which magnified anti-EU rhetoric and arguments.

In 2020 the so-called Russia Report (pdf) was published by Parliament’s intelligence and security committee and said it was unable to determine whether Russia attempted to influence the referendum but demanded the intelligence community investigate it.

In this photo illustration, the download page for the TikTok app is displayed on an Apple iPhone in Washington, on Aug. 7, 2020. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Tugendhat said young people, aged 16–24, were increasingly taking their news from Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok—which is owned by a Beijing-based company ByteDance—rather than traditional sources like the BBC, ITV, and national newspapers.

In July, Ofcom reported 28 percent of teenagers were getting their news from TikTok, second only to Instagram in popularity.

‘Content on These Platforms Will Influence Minds’

He said: “The influence of social media platforms on our younger generations here in the UK and around the world is pervasive. The contents on these platforms will influence minds.”

“It’s worth noting foreign states have considerable sway over the algorithms that all of these sources use and the challenge for democracies like ours is how we manage this debate. How we keep a society free and open ... while defending ourselves from the dishonesty that could tear us apart,” Tugendhat added.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who took over in October after being chosen as the new leader of the ruling Conservative Party, will have to call a general election some time before January 2025.

Tugendhat said, “The challenge we’ve got is that in the next election a third of first-time voters will be getting their news from organisations whose editorial board is comprised of members of the Chinese Communist Party, or other similar groups.”

He said TikTok and other apps used algorithms whose integrity were not open to any interrogation or checking.

“The reality is there are many different platforms around, TikTok is one of them, and the reality is editorial control is exercised by algorithms that are programmed by individuals,” he said.

Tugendhat said: “The idea that these are some neutral actors scientifically controlled editorial decisions, they’re not, they’re chosen. They’re just chosen by someone who has programmed them in advance rather than somebody who’s decided whether to run your news story or somebody else’s news story.”

“Now that is a concern. Because openness does matter. And editorial choices do matter. And it is important to our democracy we know what they are,” said Tugendhat.

After he made his speech, Tugendhat was asked by a journalist from The Guardian if the government planned to regulate TikTok.

Tugendhat did not reply directly but said: “Your own paper has an extremely public way of expressing its views and indeed, many of your journalists have taken Twitter and to TikTok ... in order to explain the debates within your own editorial board. Now I think that’s healthy.”

Tugendhat Wary of TikTok Algorithms

But he went on to say that TikTok and others were using algorithms without declaring how they work and what editorial decisions were used to select certain material.

Tugendhat said: “We need to understand how systems work and what systems are trying to generate results in order to understand what it is that these organisations are doing. And so having an openness online, I think it’s important to understand media ownership.”

Sunak’s government has not floated any plans to regulate TikTok or follow the Trump administration in the United States, which banned the app, a position that was revoked by President Joe Biden last year.

The Trump administration’s concerns were more about data than undue influence on young Americans.

Cyber experts say TikTok is spyware for the CCP and can hoover up data from users in the UK, United States, and other Western countries, which is potentially a national security threat.

Biden signed an executive order that directed the U.S. Department of Commerce to evaluate the threat TikTok posed and that “should address any unacceptable or undue risks consistent with overall national security, foreign policy, and economic objectives, including the preservation and demonstration of America’s core values and fundamental freedoms.”

The Commerce Department, according to the White House, will be required to review TikTok, WeChat, and other apps that are developed, designed, controlled, or manufactured by entities linked to the CCP.

A TikTok spokeswoman told the PA news agency: “TikTok is an independent platform, with a global leadership team. We are open about how our recommendation system works, and publish regular transparency reports which demonstrate our content moderation in practice.

“We’re working to provide researchers, academics, and civil society even more access to public and anonymised data about content and activity on our platform.”