Hi, a Hongkonger here. I’m glad you find a way to communicate with your daughter, but I think I need to mind you to be extra cautious of using TikTok as it’s from China.

You may have known that people can’t access some of the western social media in China. For that reason, they had to create their own, like Weibo as to Twitter. TikTok, for me, is like an Instagram or a Snapchat of China. But of course they would add some features on their own apps so that they don’t look like copying others.

Well, censorship is everywhere in China and so they look at nearly everything there, including any apps made by themselves. For example, you can’t get any results of “June 4” in any search engines in China because that’s the date of the Tiananmen massacre.

Also, as they look at everything, personal data protection is weak in the country. We have heard that a person’s features on their face are detailedly recorded and linked with other personal particulars. A few months ago, some Chinese netizens blackmailed Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters but they soon “surrendered” because Hongkongers found their bank account numbers, IDs, and more details just by searching their user names on search engines.

I’m pretty sorry to have said a lot of politics in this response for an article which is obviously about the digital age. I just hope TikTok doesn’t send any videos from their oversea users to China to collect any personal details. And yes, a lot of Hongkongers don’t use this app for fear that we may have too much recorded and sent to China (because politically we are part of China, they think they can do anything).

BTW, I think I’m too old for Snapchat or TikTok even though I’m a Millennial.