TikTok vs. Douyin: A Security and Privacy Analysis
citizenlab.ca
citizenlab.ca
> The evidence we found is inconclusive in showing if TikTok takes down posts (post censorship) unfavorable to the Chinese government. We found that TikTok contains a code module to handle a special class of server-returned search responses. If the server decides to restrict a search result, it will return a response with zero result item, and indicate the reason for restriction in a special “search_nil_info” field. The client code module contains four predefined reasons for restriction: “hate speech,” “limit,” “sensitive,” and “suicide prevention.” The server also sometimes returned reasons that were not predefined; however, we were unable to make sense of their meanings.
[0] https://citizenlab.ca/2021/03/tiktok-vs-douyin-security-priv...
The other search restricted categories they found (hate speech, limit, suicide prevention) all cause the app to display a predefined message. Rather than “politically sensitive” (which I could see being in the Chinese app but would be weird to have in the global one), this one probably corresponds to another predefined message, specifically “this phrase may be associated with behavior or content that violates our guidelines”, which you can get by searching for things like “rape”. I don’t have the necessary setup to confirm, maybe someone could check.
TikTok's privacy policy contains this paragraph:
Your phone and social network contacts, with your permission. If you choose to find other users through your phone contacts, we will access and collect the names and phone numbers and match that information against existing users of the Platform. If you choose to find other users through your social network contacts, we will collect your public profile information as well as names and profiles of your social contacts
Further down in the report they say it never uploads contacts.
> Neither Douyin nor TikTok (Musically) seemed to upload contact lists, photos, or user files.