A top executive for Meta has slammed the value system governing “Chinese company” TikTok, in an interview with Bloomberg.
Nick Clegg, Meta’s head of global affairs, pointed out what he sees as the “pretty profound differences in values” between China and the United States’ privacy views.
“TikTok, a hugely successful, highly dynamic and innovative Chinese company, is able to operate in the United States, but companies like Meta are not able to operate our social media services in China,” Clegg said.
“So there is this issue of a kind of lack of a level playing field,” he added.
“And in the end, there’s always an underlying issue of values: What values are the underpinning of new technologies?”
TikTok, owned by Chiense company ByteDance, has attempted to distance itself from the privacy concerns surrounding the Chinese Communist Party, who can legally demand information from any Chinese company without recourse.
US lawmakers are invoking similar sentiments to those expressed by Clegg in their bid to get TikTok banned from various branches of government and public life.
“China has already taken a very different path and wants to pursue a very different path based on very different values, where issues of individual data privacy and so on simply don’t loom as large in China as they do in the United States, North America, Europe and so on,” Clegg continued.
“Chinese authorities are already rushing to insert their values and the way in which those AI systems are developed.
“It’s so important that Europe, America, India don’t need to act in an identical fashion.
“But if they can align, then we can ensure that these new technologies are based on democratic values and not all autocratic values, because I can guarantee you these very powerful new technologies are going to be used by autocrats around the world for their own purposes — and I think we need to do something quite different.”
