A mini version of TikTok designed for parts of the world with slower connection speeds, is a "security risk," a new report warns.
TikTok Lite, a low-bandwidth alternative to TikTok, lacks basic protections compared to the original model, including content labels for graphic, AI-generated, misinformative and dangerous videos, according to a report published Tuesday by nonprofits Mozilla and AI Forensics.
According to the researchers, several security measures can be easily integrated into TikTok Lite without making the app larger, which consumes about 30 MB of data on the phone.
"The security features that TikTok Lite lacks are not complicated and are perfectly compatible with a lower bandwidth app," said Claudio Agosti, co-founder of AI Forensics.
"TikTok's decision to ignore these security measures is clearly a choice, not a technical necessity."
The top TikTok Lite users come from India, Brazil, and Indonesia. It is currently unavailable in the United States and most of Europe.
The report found that the lighter version, compared to TikTok, does not offer warning labels for potentially harmful content, such as dangerous prank videos and graphic content, as well as health and election misinformation and AI-generated content.
We often hear TickTok say that they are doing their best, but this is a very clear case: it seems that they have different standards worldwide.
Researchers also found that compared to the most popular version, TikTok Lite lacks features such as the ability to filter out offensive content and unwanted keywords, as well as screen management tools that could help curb app addiction.
'Double standards'
"We wonder if there is in principle a double standard depending on the countries the platform interacts with," Salvatore Romano, who leads research at AI Forensics, told Euronews Next.
We often hear TickTok say that they are doing their best, but this is a very clear case: it seems that they have different standards worldwide.
Romano said this could be problematic if those countries have lower digital standards than countries in Europe or the US, which have stricter regulations.
TikTok isn't the only tech platform launching a "lite" version to target developing countries with basic mobile phones or slow internet connectivity. Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and even Tinder have their own models.
The fact is, content that violates our rules is removed from TikTok Lite in the same way as it is from our main app, and we offer a ton of safety features.
However, the main TikTok app is available in every country where the TikTok Lite app can be used, and the company says content that violates its policies will be removed from TikTok in the same manner.
The report finds that technology platforms have historically neglected non-Western users, while having much less ability to limit regulation and enforcement.
But the Brussels effect, Europe's regulatory influence and global market power are not the way forward, because creating another technology ecosystem is not the problem, says Mozilla Fellow Odanga Madung, who lives in Kenya.
"Nobody has a problem with creating different versions of the app globally, because the circumstances are different and this is not the first application to do something like this," he said.
"But the guidelines that are there should also be the case, at least in the smaller versions of the applications."
Romano, who lives in Spain, initially approached Madungo to talk about TikTok. Like many people in the West, he had never heard of TikTok Lite.
Another problem is that there is context bias in creating different versions for different parts of the world.
"The people who create many of these ecosystems can only judge them and perhaps work on them based on their subsequent experience, which is largely Western," Madung said.
TikTok says it wants to seek local input and has eight regional security advisory boards in the Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East and North Africa regions.
How did TikTok respond?
"There are several factual inaccuracies in this report that fundamentally misrepresent our approach to safety," a TikTok spokesperson told Euronews Next in an email.
"The fact is, content that violates our rules is removed from TikTok Lite in the same way that it is removed from our main app. Plus, we offer numerous safety features that we would have explained if Mozilla had asked us before publishing their report."
TikTok said it would be in talks with Mozilla, explaining that the limited descriptions are a bug the company is working to fix.
However, Mozilla told Euronews Next that it had approached Mozilla with the report before publication and had been told it contained inaccuracies, without specifying which ones.
TikTok told Euronews Next that the inaccuracies include a claim that there are 1 billion TikTok Lite users, noting that there are 1 billion users of the main TikTok app, not the Lite version.
TikTok also indicated that TikTok Lite is not available in France and Spain. The report does mention this and makes this clear by talking about another version of TikTok Lite that was previously available in Europe and was criticized by the European Union.
EU concerns
In April, another version of TikTok Lite was criticized by European regulators after the app quietly launched in France and Spain in April.
The EU raised concerns about a separate rewards program, which allowed users aged 18 and over to earn points by liking videos and creators and referring people to the app. In return, they received points that could be used for Amazon vouchers or TikTok currency, which is used to pay creators.
In April, TikTok announced that it would voluntarily suspend TikTok Lite's rewards program due to EU concerns.
"TikTok always strives to work constructively with the EU Commission and other regulators. As such, we are voluntarily suspending the rewards features in TikTok Lite while we address the concerns they raised," the company said.
In February, the Commission opened its first formal proceedings against TikTok to assess whether the company may have failed to comply with the bloc's obligations. Digital Services Act (DSA) in areas such as the protection of minors, transparency in advertising, access to data for researchers and the risk management of addictive design and harmful content.
The investigation is still ongoing.
How was the report created?
The new report conducted a comparative analysis of TikTok Lite - Save Data and the main TikTok app, examining the availability of each feature in both versions.
It reviewed a sample of over 120 videos. Visual documentation, in the form of screenshots, meticulously catalogued all the perceived differences between the two applications.
The tested versions of TikTok Lite - Save Data came from Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, and Chile.
