A government minister has raised concerns over young people using TikTok as a news source as they believe it could be used by China to 'influence minds'. Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, said today that “challenges” could be created if China declares the platform’s algorithms a national security asset.
Video-sharing platform TikTok, which is increasingly used to read and share news, is owned by Chinese firm ByteDance. Mr Tugendhat used a speech at the Policy Exchange think tank to stress it is “critical” that people where debates are coming from.
He added that "for too long foreign interference has been slowly creeping into British democracy," something that could be made worse if China started to try and exert more influence through algorithms on the millions of young people using TikTok in the UK, especially through the news shown to people.
