MPs in uproar as Parliament sets up a TikTok account
Will Instagram’s catastrophic drive to copy TikTok’s annoying videos spell the end of supergeek Zuckerberg’s reign?
A TIKTOK account set up for Parliament has sparked uproar among senior Tory MPs sanctioned by China.
Concerns have been raised that the social media giant might be sharing user data with its Chinese parent company Bytedance.
A letter has been sent to the Speakers of both houses calling for the account, which was set up on Wednesday, to be deleted.
Among the signatories are ex-Tory leader Sir Iain duncan Smith, chairman of the foreign affairs committee Tom Tugendhat, and vice chairman of the 1922 committee Nus Ghani. All three were last year sanctioned by the Chinese government, for ‘maliciously spreading lies and disinformation’ about human rights abuses in China.
The letter expresses doubt over reassurances given by TikTok executives to MPs that its user data is not shared with Bytedance, according to wesbite Politico. Under China’s National Intelligence law, companies in the country are obliged to hand over data to government authorities on request.
TikTok bosses have repeatedly assured MPs they do not hand over user data to Chinese authorities. However, a leaked recording obtained by Buzzfeed last month revealed that US user data had been accessed repeatedly from China.
The letter claims that the company may have misled Parliament over the matter. Other parts of government including No10 already have TikTok accounts.
A spokesman for Parliament said it would respond to the letter in due course, adding: ‘We undertook all necessary steps to ensure none of our data is at risk.’ TikTok said the letter contained ‘factual inaccuracies’, insisting: ‘We have never provided user data to the Chinese government.’
KIM KARdASHIAn and Kylie Jenner are stellar members of the attention-seeking, oversharing celebrity family who are adored and loathed in equal measure by millions of people across the world.
Their narcissistic antics on the internet via selfies, videos and posts have brought them vast fortunes and given them enormous power as ‘influencers’.
Jenner, a 24-year-old model and beauty industry mogul, has 361 million followers on Instagram — comfortably more than the total population of the U.S.
Kardashian, 41, also a model, lingerie designer and possessor of a bottom that famously ‘broke the internet’, lags slightly behind with a mere 327 million.
They are the unrivalled queens of social media — and tech tycoons know you cross them at your peril when even markets tremble in their fragrant wake.
Four years ago, Jenner casually let slip that she no longer used the instant messaging app Snapchat. Its shares promptly fell more than six per cent, wiping more than £1billion from the company’s value in just a day.
So when, a few days ago, the siblings shared a critical post about Instagram, alarm bells rang in Silicon valley.
Jenner shared an image on the site that included the words ‘Make Instagram Instagram again. (stop trying to be tiktok i just want to see cute photos of my friends.) Sincerely, Everyone.’ To which Kardashian added: ‘Pleaseeeeeee’ and her sister later echoed: ‘Pretty Please.’
Tens of millions of fellow users — of whom a majority are female — knew precisely what they meant and would have been nodding vigorously in agreement.
THE rapacious Mark Zuckerberg and his cronies at Meta (the new name for Facebook), which owns Instagram, now find they have incurred the wrath of one of social media’s most powerful groups, the women who use the app as a window on their lives and loves.
This is not just about celebrities, influencers, photographers and designers drumming up business and attention with their great, and sometimes not-so-great, taste. It’s mothers worldwide showing off their children, their homes, a new dress or bag.
Or perhaps just the amazing starter they have just been served at their local bistro.
The same principle guides pretty much all of Instagram’s 1.3billion users: if you see something or someone you like, you follow them. It can be classy or trashy but above all it is — or was — fun.
The trouble started when Instagram recently updated its app to predominantly serve up socalled Reels (short videos) to users on their home screens.
Unlike the still images Instagrammers were used to enjoying, as and when these were posted by those they followed, the ‘short-form’ videos are suggested by computer algorithms monitoring users’ online habits. In fact, Reels are a blatant attempt to mimic TikTok, a Chinese app with an emphasis on home videos, which saw its popularity soar during Covid lockdowns.
It is now the most-used social network in the world, but clearly a long way from Instagram’s photosharing roots.
Leaked memos from within Meta have suggested the tech behemoth is concerned about falling behind other social media platforms and has been rethinking how its users ‘see’ their feeds.
This attempt to be more TikTok was the result.
Evidently, Instagram users didn’t like the ‘update’. A petition was launched — then shared by Jenner and Kardashian, with their zillions of followers — demanding that Instagram bosses restore the platform to its previous incarnation.
‘Make Instagram Instagram again’ attracted hundreds of thousands of signatures on the website Change.org.
Tati Bruening, the photographer who launched it, said she did so on behalf of ‘the people’ to bring back chronological timelines and an algorithm that favours photos.
She explained that, while scrolling through Instagram last week, she noticed her friends’ snaps were missing from her feed.
By yesterday her petition had attracted nearly 250,000 signatories
— and then came news that Instagram
had caved in... or sort of. After days of damaging headlines for Meta on various fronts, Instagram chief executive Adam Mosseri said the company was pausing the rollout of its new version, and some of the changes would be dropped, while the number of algorithmically suggested videos would be reduced.
HOWEVER, he made it very clear that this might be only a shortterm victory for the critics. The number of videos inflicted on users will rise again when his company feels the technology has improved.
with typical Silicon valley vanity, Mosseri said: ‘I’m glad we took a risk. If we’re not failing every once in a while, we’re not big enough or bold enough.
‘But we definitely need to take a big step back and regroup.’ He then invited user feedback on Twitter, but probably wished he hadn’t. He was immediately flooded with withering complaints from users who told the company to back off and stop interfering.
‘Horrendous’, ‘disgusting’ and ‘unusable’, they chorused. Many complained they didn’t want to see videos and adverts produced by people they neither knew nor cared about. All they wanted was to be able to view photographs posted by their friends or people they chose to follow — which was the main reason they had joined Instagram in the first place.
In truth, this is a clash not just between still photos (Instagram) and short videos (TikTok) but a generational struggle.
As Instagram diehards see it, the battle is between a grown-up social media forum where people