TikTok now specifically tracks immigration status and gender identity 

Another day, another terms-of-service update. It happens all the time. But a few days ago, after President Donald Trump’s long-awaited TikTok sale finally went through, the TikTok USDS Joint Venture’s first terms-of-service update made its way through the birth canal and onto phones across America. Headed by 81-year-old Larry Ellison, the owner of Oracle, an entire Hawaiian island, a fighter jet, and a close confidant of Trump, the new owners purchased the company for $14 billion. The purchase prevents the app from being banned over concerns of the Chinese government tracking American citizens and using data to pump the non-patriotic form of propaganda. In addition to the massive amounts of domestic propaganda that will undoubtedly make its way to the platform, the private equity firm Silver Lake is getting a slice. So is the Abu Dhabi-based AI company, MGX, which will walk away with a 15% stake in a company that had to be sold due to concerns that American data is in the control of a foreign entity. But we digress. What’s really important is what they bought it for. According to Dr. Jess Maddox, an associate professor at the University of Georgia and social media researcher, the updates give us a picture of what they’re after, and it’s pretty alarming. As stated in the new terms and conditions, TikTok now specifically tracks data related to users’ immigration status and gender identity, which is an especially worrying addition given the close proximity between the new owners and an administration hostile toward marginalized groups.

Part of Dr. Maddox’s research involves studying documents such as privacy policies and terms of service to examine “how values were communicated” to stakeholders, regulators, and audiences. “What matters to platforms? What they’re interested in is obviously going to be given precedence and highlighted is important in those documents,” Dr. Maddox told The A.V. Club by phone. What she found in a 2018 study was that “community is a way that platforms sell themselves.” So, when the government banned TikTok for 12 hours, the loss of community was the main narrative about the ban’s adverse effects on users. “As social media companies face immense scrutiny and calls for regulation and get dragged up to the hill in front of Congress,” Maddox says, “they have to sell themselves in such a way, and being able to rely on this narrative of community is one way to do that.”

Dr. Maddox argues that what goes into these documents is less about user safety and more about what matters to the company. TikTok has long mined its users’ data to sell to advertisers—that’s how social media works. (“If it’s free, you’re the product,” Maddox says.) Data has always been collected, but the company now specifically collects information on “racial or ethnic origin, national origin, religious beliefs, mental or physical health diagnosis, sexual life or sexual orientation, status as transgender or nonbinary, citizenship or immigration status, or financial information,” per TikTok’s updated policy. This doesn’t just mean information provided upon sign-up, but the content users create. If a TikToker makes a video declaring themselves an immigrant or coming out as trans, that information could be collected by a company with extremely close ties to an administration expanding efforts to harm those groups. “When this administration has been actively harming trans and non-binary individuals and immigrants, and seeing that, specifically listed now in something that is being tracked, is very concerning with how this administration has acted towards those groups,” says Maddox.

 

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Companies are communicating what’s important to them in their documents, so when TikTok adds specific language that it will now be hoovering up sensitive information like immigration status, it’s not just for funsies and inclusion. Social media companies have had no issue handing user data to hostile government entities. “This could be nothing, but it also very much could be going to some form of surveillance,” she continues. “It’s not unreasonable or tinfoil hat-y to say that. After Roe v. Wade was overturned, Meta turned over private DMs in Facebook Messenger to the legal system in the states where women may have crossed state lines to try to get abortions.” We’ve also seen Amazon’s suburban surveillance apparatus, Ring, come under fire for its recent partnership with Flock, which gives government entities like ICE access to its network of AI-powered cameras. To say nothing of Ring’s already long-term relationship with law enforcement.

What can users do to protect themselves? Knowing is half the battle. “Everybody knows their own level of comfort and own level of vulnerability,” Maddox says. “I’m not going to blanket say get off social media because I also think that if we do that, bullies win. What I mean by that is, social media will become a white, cisgender, often male space if people of color, trans, non-binary, and queer individuals start leaving.” Maddox continues, “Sometimes stepping away can be good for a whole host of reasons. I would encourage people to really take stock of their own circumstances, to know their own level of comfort with an app like TikTok, to know what they may be vulnerable to in this moment that is rather horrific, and make the decision that is best for them and their families, and also know that there is no wrong decision.”