Re:TikTok vs. Douyin: A Security and Privacy Analysis
by godelski on Wednesday March 24, 2021 @02:30PM
(#26571187)
For those skimming go here for censorship[0]
> 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.
> 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...