Lawmakers should establish a legal basis through legislative amendments before social media platforms can be required to remove problematic accounts, a legislator said on Sunday in response to a growing trend of disinformation on TikTok.
The National Security Bureau last week said that the number of abnormal accounts on TikTok last year increased by more than 16 times compared with the previous year.
Although there are much fewer such accounts on TikTok than on Facebook, the proportion on TikTok is much greater given the difference in market share between the two platforms, the bureau said.
Photo: Reuters
“There were 4,371 problematic accounts flagged on TikTok last year in Taiwan, compared with 21,000 on Facebook,” it said.
“However, there were 50 percent fewer Facebook users in the country last year, while the number of TikTok users rose to make it the third-most popular platform,” it said.
The trend meant that if TikTok’s market share continues to grow, the number of abnormal accounts could grow to alarming proportions, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Kuan-ting (陳冠廷) said.
“There must be laws in place before we can implement restrictions on these accounts,” he said, adding that such laws could only be strictly enforced after the platform establishes a physical presence in Taiwan.
“Originally, TikTok parent company Douyin (抖音) was planning to set up a representative office in Taiwan last year, but that has not happened,” he said.
The Ministry of Digital Affairs, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Mainland Affairs Council would jointly review TikTok’s operations and determine the level of Chinese funding behind the company, he said.
The reason the US could exercise control over TikTok’s operations there is that the company has a physical presence in the US, Kuma Academy cofounder Ho Cheng-hui (何澄輝) said.
“TikTok is not subject to regulation in Taiwan, since the draft digital intermediary service act has not yet passed, and there are no other laws to serve as the basis for such regulation,” he said. “At present, we cannot even implement measures to reduce the convenience of downloading TikTok.”
Institute for National Defense and Security Research associate researcher Tzeng Yi-suo (曾怡碩) said that China might take advantage of this lack of regulation by outsourcing mass production of disinformation.
“The cost of cognitive operations is relatively cheap, and content on platforms like TikTok can influence young people quite easily,” he said.
“However, this does not mean that young people in Taiwan will inevitably watch such content. It might not reach the target audience identified by China, and the impact might be relatively small,” he added.
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