Sky News in Australia has left TikTok due to security concerns, which have led several Western governments to prohibit the video app from being used on official devices.
The security risks posed by the “Beijing-controlled platform,” according to Sky News Australia digital editor Jack Houghton, are “too great for any serious news publisher.”
“TikTok is a spy network masquerading as a social media platform which has been proven to illegally pilfer the data of journalists, public citizens and politicians,” Houghton wrote.
“We urge [media organizations] to consider this dilemma and stop trading security and integrity for a few worthless views,” he added.
Experts say that while the security concerns behind the recent government bans are serious, they appear to reflect only the possibility of TikTok being used for foreign intelligence, not that it has been. There is still no public evidence that the Chinese government spied on people using TikTok.
Sky News Australia is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (NWSA) and is distinct from Sky News UK, which is owned by Sky Group, a division of the US conglomerate Comcast (CCZ).
ByteDance, TikTok’s owner, admitted last year that four employees improperly accessed the personal data of two journalists from the Financial Times and BuzzFeed.
According to ByteDance, the relevant staff were investigating potential information leaks and were fired for abusing their authority to access TikTok user data.
Separately, broader concerns have been raised by experts worldwide that TikTok presents a security risk due to the vast troves of data it collects on millions of users, and its vulnerability to potential interference from the Chinese government, which wields considerable influence over businesses in its jurisdiction.
Government bans
The app has been banned on government devices in the United States and other Western countries, with the Biden administration threatening to go even further by imposing a broader ban unless TikTok’s Chinese owners sell their stakes in the company. A blanket ban would deny access to the platform to 150 million US users.
TikTok has repeatedly denied any ties to Beijing, and its CEO, Shou Chew, recently told a US congressional hearing that he had seen no evidence that the Chinese government had access to user data and had never requested it. Furthermore, he stated that the amount of information the company collects on users is comparable to that of most industry players.
While a number of governments have taken steps to remove TikTok from their employees’ phones, most major news organizations have yet to follow suit.
The BBC advised employees last month to delete TikTok from their work phones, following a similar move by the Danish public broadcaster, DR, but the British broadcaster continues to publish content on the short form video app to millions of followers.
According to Sky News Australia’s Houghton, the BBC’s decision to ban the app while still publishing content on the platform is a “paradox” that “demonstrates the hunger for reaching new demographics has perverted editorial strategies in newsrooms globally.”
Houghton stated that Sky News Australia had 65,000 followers and “many millions of video views” before deleting its account.
The channel is known for its conservative commentary and was described last year as “an important right-wing outlet with growing international influence” in a report by the UK think tank the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
It was also described as a “content hub for influencers, skeptics, and outlets all over the world” in relation to the climate crisis.
Sky News Australia was barred from uploading new content on YouTube for one week in 2021 for spreading misinformation about the Covid pandemic. At the time, the broadcaster issued a statement in which it denied allegations that its host had denied the existence of Covid-19 and that it had published or removed videos in which they said so.
In an online article, Houghton also argued that the decision was “a disturbing attack on the ability to think freely.”