If you haven’t heard of TikTok yet then… how have you managed that? The Chinese-owned social media giant has rivalled the likes of Instagram and Snapchat for the last few years, capturing the growingly limited attention span of consumers from all generations. That’s why it’s so scary that the app was allegedly tracking users who watched lesbian and gay content.
TikTok’s employees bravely filed complaints about the reported logging of such users. “For at least a year, some employees at TikTok were able to find what they described internally as a list of users who watch gay content on the popular app, a collection of information that sparked worker complaints, according to former TikTok employees,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
One of the main concerns was that this type of surveillance could be used to blackmail users who watch gay content, especially those who live in more homophobic communities, in cases of leaks or breaches of privacy by a third party.
Not only have Russian and Afghan authorities reportedly been keeping “kill lists” of LGBT people during their regimes, but the Human Rights Watch has been documenting “the widespread use of digital platforms by authorities to entrap, extort, and prosecute LGBT people in Middle East and North Africa,” according to the Middle East Eye.
While some will say that gay people have it better than we ever have had before, there are certain risks present once a historically repressed group becomes more visible. We represent a threat to authoritarian regimes and political parties, both overseas and in the West.
Many of us are concerned about the brewing retaliation against gay and lesbian rights. It has already begun in the form of gay representation being viewed as propaganda across the globe, with “religious freedom” being the reason homophobes get to shove us back in the closet.
When we aren’t being threatened by authoritarians into submission, including the surveillance of our internet use for possibly sinister reasons, then we are being erased by the growing push to “be nice” and convert to heterosexuality. There is huge pressure for lesbians to identify as the opposite sex so we are “straight” and to include male-attraction in the definition of lesbianism through males and/or bisexual females calling themselves lesbians.
Lesbian means female homosexual. We exist. We deserve the same privacy, definition, class consciousness and representation as everybody else.
