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Examining the Ethical Dilemmas of Advertising on TikTok

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Examining the Ethical Dilemmas of Advertising on TikTok

Sophia Neubaum

Fall 2020 Semester

Examining the Ethical Dilemmas of Advertising on TikTok

Introduction

In recent years, journalism has completely transformed to adapt to the digital age.

Modern journalists use social media for breaking news updates and adapt their stories for all

platforms. Advertisers and journalists have more opportunities than ever to advertise their

products online and on social media, however, it is imperative that professionals in this field

report and advertise ethically on every platform.

As social media trends and platforms change, so do the opportunities for online

advertisers. TikTok is a rapidly growing social media app that is used by youths around the

world. While there is plenty of opportunity for advertising on the app, multiple ethical dilemmas

arise for advertisers and journalists on TikTok. The purpose of this paper is to explore the ethical

dilemmas of advertising on TikTok, including advertising to children, advertising on an app that

is heavily censored and potentially threatens national security, and journalists’ usage of the app.

History of Social Media

To understand the popularity of TikTok as a platform, it is important to know the history

of social media. Social media began as “digital communication through email, bulletin board

messaging, and real-time online chatting,” (The Evolution of Social Media, 2020). The earliest

platforms to introduce basic social networking include Friendster, Six Degrees, Blogger, and

LinkedIn (The Evolution of Social Media, 2020). In 2003, Myspace launched and became the

most visited website in the world in just three years (The Evolution of Social Media, 2020).

Facebook surpassed Myspace in 2008 and was followed by the creation of platforms that are still

popular today, including Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat (The Evolution of Social

Media, 2020).
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Figure 1. Social Media Throughout the Years (2020).

Today, social media users are looking for platforms that provide personalized content,

focus on community, and utilize video content (The Evolution of Social Media, 2020). Video

content has become largely popular in recent years. According to a study by HubSpot, “video

became the No. 1 form of media used in content marketing in 2019,” (The Evolution of Social

Media, 2020). In 2020, it has become a $135 billion industry, and 59% of marketers who have

not previously utilized video marketing plan to this year (The Evolution of Social Media, 2020).

Due to being a short-form video sharing platform, TikTok has quickly become “a top 10 platform

among young consumers and now exceeds Facebook use among 13-18-year-olds,” (TikTok's

Massive Growth, 2020).

Figure 2. Current Gen Z and Millennial Social Media Usage (2020)

TikTok’s rampant rise to fame can be attributed to its short video format, powerful

algorithm, and ever-changing trends (Xu, Yan, & Zhang, 2020). The expansive collection of

special effects and sounds alongside the app’s algorithm and content recommendation make it

unlike any other social network (Xu, Yan, & Zhang, 2019).

Advertising to Children

TikTok is an app for all ages with a large number of young users. Since 2018, the app has

been downloaded over 2 billion times globally (Sherman, 2020). The app has recently become

massively popular among Gen Z and Millennial users. A survey from YPulse reported that Gen

Z users on the app have jumped from 35% in February to 56% in September (TikTok's Massive

Growth Among Gen Z, 2020). This section will explore the ethical parameters regarding

advertising to children and their lack of digital literacy, their vulnerability to online advertising

persuasion, and the collection of their data.

Figure 3. A breakdown of the increase of Gen Z and Millennial users (2020)

As of June 2020, users aged 10 to 19 make up 32% of TikTok accounts in the United

States (Clement, 2020). According to the same study, the next largest age group on the app is

users aged 20-29, who make up 29% of TikTok accounts (Clement, 2020). Advertisers on

TikTok must be sensitive to the large population of children that use the app because children are

vulnerable to online advertising. According to a study from the American Academy of

Pediatrics, children lack the digital literacy necessary to recognize an advertisement online

(Radesky, Chassiakos, Ameenuddin, & Navsaria, 2020). While children are mostly able to

distinguish advertisements on television and in print, “newer forms of advertising found in

mobile and interactive media and smart technologies, often powered by personal data, are more

difficult to identify,” (Radesky, Chassiakos, Ameenuddin, & Navsaria, 2020).

Furthermore, the inability to identify an advertisement on an interactive app such as

TikTok makes it easy to persuade and take advantage of adolescent users. While school-aged

users may be able to recognize an advertisement, they “often are not able to resist it when it is
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embedded within trusted social networks, encouraged by celebrity influencers, or delivered next

to personalized content,” (Radesky, Chassiakos, Ameenuddin, & Navsaria, 2020). TikTok’s

powerful algorithm paired with discrete in-app advertisements creates an environment where it

becomes increasingly more difficult for children to identify and resist advertisements amidst

regular content.

According to TikTok, the app’s algorithm is very user-specific and curates each user’s

feed with a recommendation system (TikTok, 2019). The personalized “for you” page

recommends content specifically tailored to the user’s interests and past activity on the app. This

can become confusing for young users due to the four types of advertisements available on

TikTok: in-feed ads, brand takeovers, branded hashtags and branded effects. In-feed ads appear

in between regular videos, making them difficult to distinguish from native content, while brand

takeovers appear when users first open the app (Worb, 2020). Hashtag challenges allow users to

create their own content to go along with the campaign, and the branded lenses allow users to try

different effects and filters (Worb, 2020). The personalized content, powered by the collection of

personal data, along with the interactive and in-feed ads, makes it easy for advertisers to

persuade children and teenagers on the app.

This ethical quandary has already been seen on TikTok. TikTok’s parent company,

ByteDance, has received backlash for allowing fake advertising on the app for products such as

low-interest loans and “miracle drugs” (He, 2020). Other products advertised on TikTok, like

freemium games that charge additional fees, “entice young users to open their wallets,” (He,

2020). Aside from false advertisements, many legitimate advertisers have joined the app solely

to appeal to the young audience. Luxury brands, in particular, have eagerly joined TikTok due to

the growth of Gen Z users in the past year (Biron, 2020). The increase in luxury brands
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advertising on the app has been significant, too, and “in July alone, TikTok welcomed Fendi,

Balenciaga, Dior, and Stella McCartney, coming on the heels of newcomers like Burberry, YSL,

and Gucci earlier this year,” (Biron, 2020).

Collecting Children’s Data

In addition to the concerns of children’s lack of digital literacy and their vulnerability to

interactive media advertisements, there is also a lot of sensitivity surrounding children’s data and

privacy. The American Academy of Pediatrics found that the “collection of mobile

device-derived data has been found to be highest in news and children’s apps,” (Radesky,

Chassiakos, Ameenuddin, & Navsaria, 2020). The information collected may be stored and sold

to third parties, and it can be “used to infer personal characteristics, such as sexual orientation or

health problems,” (Radesky, Chassiakos, Ameenuddin, & Navsaria, 2020). Online advertising

has allowed advertisers to track and influence multiple areas of the data they collect, such as

location, activity, and in-app behavior, and create a digital profile of the user that may be shared

with other companies (Radesky, Chassiakos, Ameenuddin, & Navsaria, 2020).

The Children’s Advertising Review Unit, or CARU, is an investigative unit of the Better

Business Bureau that protects children from inappropriate or misleading advertisements as well

as data collection (Children's Advertising Review Unit, 2020). Regarding the collection of

children’s data, CARU’s guidelines state that “advertisers have special responsibilities when

advertising to children or collecting data from children online. They should take into account the

limited knowledge, experience, sophistication and maturity of the audience to which the message

is directed,” (Self-Regulatory Program for Children's Advertising [PDF]. (n.d.)).

TikTok has a privacy policy specifically for younger users, ages 13 and under, that

discloses what data is being collected and what it is used for. For younger users, the policy states
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that TikTok collects limited information including the user’s username, password, and birthday.

However, in 2019, ByteDance “paid what was at the time the largest fine in Federal Trade

Commission history for invading the privacy of underage users,” (Socolow, 2019). TikTok was

fined “$5.7 million for illegally collecting the names, email addresses, pictures and locations of

kids under age 13,” (Timberg & Romm, 2019). The data collected violated the 1998 Children’s

Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which does not allow online services to collect

children’s data without parental consent (Timberg & Romm, 2019). COPPA applies to “services

directed at children or ones that have ‘actual knowledge’ that children are using them,” (Timberg

& Romm, 2019).

While the app does not sell collected information to third parties, the privacy policy

discloses that, “the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure.

Although we will do our best to protect your information, for example, by encryption, we cannot

guarantee the security of your information transmitted through the Platform,” (TikTok, 2020).

Content Regulation and Censorship

Along with the backlash that parent company ByteDance has received for fake

advertisements, ethical concerns regarding the organization’s use of censorship and poor content

regulation have been met with criticism as well. ByteDance has been dealing with content

regulation scandals since the launch of one of its first products, Jinri TouTiao. TouTiao, a popular

news and information platform, had around 120 million daily users (He, 2020). Concerns about

the app’s content were sparked by the promotion of “clickbaits filled with fake news that

occasionally borders on pornography,” (He, 2020). The app allowed “pornographic and vulgar

content” on multiple occasions and was considered to be a “bad influence in shaping online
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opinion,” (Bin, 2018). In 2018, Beijing removed the app from its local app marketplace to

improve the regulation of its content (Bin, 2018).

Similar to TouTiao, TikTok has been ridiculed for the regulation of the app’s content due

to censorship from the Chinese government. Topics sensitive to Chinese politics, such as

criticism of the government, are removed from the platform “under a general ban of

‘criticism/attack towards policies,’” (He, 2020). Suspicion regarding the censorship of Chinese

politics came to light after the Washington Post reported that there was very little content

regarding the Hong Kong protests on the app (Hern, 2019). The app’s strong algorithm increases

censorship concerns due to its ability to pick and choose which topics to promote, “limiting the

spread of information that could potentially anger the Chinese regime,” (He, 2020). Moreover,

TikTok’s censorship is not exclusive to Chinese politics. In the United States, managers were told

to hide any politically charged content, not just content in relation to China (Socolow, 2019).

Data Collection Controversy

The censorship of user-generated content is not the only controversy the Chinese-owned

app has had. In August, President Trump released an executive order addressing not only the

app’s censorship but also the additional threat of data collection. The order stated that Americans

were to be prohibited from carrying out transactions with ByteDance 45 days after the

statement’s release, “meaning U.S. companies and individuals couldn’t advertise with the

platforms, offer them for download via app stores, or enter into licensing agreements with them,”

(Gertz, 2020).

President Trump addressed multiple instances of censorship on TikTok, including the

Hong Kong riots and “China’s treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities,” (Trump,

2020). The statement explained that censorship of politically sensitive topics could pose a
 10

potential threat to Americans, citing the spread of misinformation as a potential result (Trump,

2020).

Furthermore, the executive order addressed concerns of the Chinese Communist Party

potentially gaining access to user data collected by TikTok (Trump, 2020). While other apps

collect personal data from its users, such as Facebook, which collects more data than any other

social media, “TikTok’s status as a Chinese-owned company puts use of the app—and attendant

risks and ethical concerns—in a different category,” (Bell, 2020). President Trump stated that

China would be able to use the collected information to “track the locations of Federal

employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct

corporate espionage,” (Trump, 2020). However, the ban of TikTok in the United States was put

to a halt after President Trump approved a deal that allowed American companies Oracle and

Wal-Mart to invest a combined 20% stake in the company (Novet, Kimball, & Sherman, 2020).

Oracle, which provides cloud infrastructure to both 8x8 and Zoom, invested 12.5% and took over

as TikTok’s cloud provider (Novet, Kimball, & Sherman, 2020).

Journalists As Users

The potential threat posed by data collection on TikTok sparked controversy among

public officials and journalists. Members of President-elect Joe Biden’s campaign “were

instructed to delete ... TikTok from their phones,” (Bell, 2020). Despite the Trump

Administration’s and other public officials’ concerns, many journalists and news organizations

remain active users on the app. In fact, some news organizations have gained a large following

on the app. The most notable account is the Washington Post’s TikTok, run by Dave Jorgensen,

which has over 773,000 followers (Bell, 2020). New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz, who

has gained almost 500,000 followers on the app, is another active user along with NBC News
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and Yahoo News (Bell, 2020). Journalists who use the app have been criticized for

compromising their trust and credibility (Miller, 2020). Critics have accused journalists on

TikTok of not considering, “the safety and ethics of using and promoting the platform without

giving adequate weight to the myriad of ways it might ultimately be compromised,” (Bell, 2020).

Conclusion

Despite TikTok’s massive popularity, advertisers and journalists must be wary of the

ethical implications of advertising on the app due to children’s vulnerability to digital

advertising, the app’s content regulation and censorship, and the history of data collection

through ByteDance. As a relatively new app, TikTok has had many successes and downfalls

since its introduction to the United States in 2018. Unlike any other social media, TikTok’s

algorithm simultaneously boosts the app’s popularity and opens the door for ethical conflicts

regarding advertising to children. TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have both been

involved in censorship and data collection scandals, resulting in distrust from U.S. government

officials as well as advertisers and journalists. While the Trump Administration’s threat of

banning the app in the United States was not followed through with, 80% of the app still belongs

to the Chinese-owned ByteDance. However, journalists and news organizations such as the

Washington Post remain active and popular users of the app. The future of the app remains in an

ever-changing state of uncertainty as the effects of the Oracle and Wal-Mart deals remain

unknown.
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