Tiktok's addictive videos keep users awake until the wee hours of the morning. And the truth is that the application's links with China are also making politicians lose sleep. Last Tuesday, the United States House of Representatives approved a bill that forces the Chinese company ByteDance, the app's parent company, to sell it to an owner of another nationality if it wants to continue operating in the United States, its largest market. Other countries, from Britain and France to Australia, have begun to introduce some restrictions of their own. It is possible that the most downloaded application in the world, according to one measurement, will soon begin to disappear from screens. If it wants to remain there, it must cut its ties with China.
Some fears about TikTok turn out to be exaggerated. It is true that the company collects a lot of data about its users. However, there's no evidence that it collects more than it claims (or, for that matter, more than rivals like Facebook). If Chinese spies want to find out details about Americans, the country's lax data protection laws allow them to buy that information from third parties. Banning Chinese apps that collect personal data will mean banning many, cutting off Western consumers from some of the world's most dynamic digital services.
Additionally, TikTok has injected a healthy dose of competition into an otherwise concentrated social media market. Six of the ten most downloaded applications in the world last year are from Meta, the owner of Facebook. TikTok, which managed to take first place in that Rankin, has brought with it a wave of innovation and disruption. And consumers have benefited.
However, there is a reason for governments' concern that justifies the new US offensive. TikTok has gone from being a music video application for playback to a general social platform with more than 150 million users in the United States alone. In that country, a third of adults under 30 years of age not only consider TikTok a source of entertainment, but also news. Therefore, it is really worrying that it has links with China, a country whose government conceives the media as a propaganda tool and which maintains a deep ideological conflict with the West.
Most countries already have laws restricting foreign ownership of traditional media outlets such as television and print (just ask Rupert Murdoch, who became a proud American citizen just before taking over Fox News ). A bid by Abu Dhabi's ruling family for the Telegraph newspaper is now the subject of close scrutiny in Britain. A Chinese company would not be allowed to buy CNN. However, TikTok is becoming more and more influential.
It is time for governments to apply the same logic to new media that they apply to old media. At the very least, the new platforms deserve greater scrutiny, as their output is very opaque. The editorial line of a newspaper can be read black on white; Instead, each TikTok user receives a different feed, and the company does not provide adequate tools for researchers to examine the aggregate of results. As much as studies indicate bias (some allege it in their coverage of Gaza, for example), it is impossible for an analyst outside the company to know if TikTok's algorithm responds to user preferences or if there is someone in Beijing influencing the results.
TikTok admits to blocking videos on topics such as the Tiananmen Square massacre in the past, but insists things are different now. It has made extensive and costly efforts to keep Americans' data separate from other users and has opened its code to inspection. However, the company has also weakened itself. It maintains that selling its US operations would be unviable, since they are so closely linked to the rest of the business; but this raises doubts about the veracity of claims of strict separation from Beijing. It has tried to mobilize users in favor of its cause and has sent them notifications to contact their representatives in Congress. By doing so, it has only accentuated its potential as a political force; Some undecided representatives are said to have turned against TikTok after their switchboards were overwhelmed by calls. Nor can it be said that the trickle of scandals has helped much, such as ByteDance's admission that its employees have spied on the habits of American journalists on the platform.
The best outcome is for TikTok to survive. It is a source of competition and innovation, as well as fun. The bill before Congress allows ByteDance to sell, rather than simply shut down. If it is not willing to do so (or, more likely, if China does not allow it), ByteDance could take the company public as a public company in the United States or a third country. Citizens of the United States and other countries are better off with TikTok on their screens. However, it is time that the same rules as traditional media apply to new media. That requires moving a platform as large and influential as TikTok away from the influence of a country as manipulative and ideological as China.
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Translation: Juan Gabriel López Guix
