Has TikTok’s final tick started? The vote, on April 20, by the House of Representatives, of a bill threatening to ban the platform of Chinese origin causes, one imagines, cold sweats not only for those responsible for the social network in the United States but also to their sponsors from Beijing: the text opens the possibility of banning TikTok from American territory, depriving its 170 million subscribers of its videos and other addictive games.
In question ? Officially, the dangers that the application poses to American democracy. Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, confirmed it half-heartedly during a hearing before Congress: according to the most famous spy in the United States, there is no guarantee that the Chinese Communist Party is not behind TikTok to influence the next elections.
Proof of the omnipotence of TikTok, this fear is also shared in Europe – less than two months before the European elections – or elsewhere in the world. A fear largely fueled by the troubled relations between TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, but also by the growing influence of the application among an ever-larger population: 1.5 billion subscribers worldwide, 134 million in Europe, including 25 million in France… Among young people, TikTok is a hit, and this is the other question it raises, that of a form of digital dependence. “We are pointing out the risks of alienation caused by the use of the application, in particular among those who do not necessarily have sufficient critical distancing, warns Emmanuel Lincot, professor at the Catholic Institute of Paris, sinologist and researcher at Iris. European Commissioner Thierry Breton even judges the application, with its recent little sister TikTok Lite, potentially “as toxic and addictive as light cigarettes. has never been under so much surveillance One perhaps explaining the other: its success has earned it tenacious hostility from its competitors – although they are not above reproach either on these subjects “In the United States, there is. clearly an anti-TikTok lobby organized by the other Gafam”, observes Maria Mercanti-Guérin, lecturer at the IAE of Paris-Sorbonne.
But the war against TikTok goes beyond a battle between digital giants. Against a backdrop of threats of foreign interference and attempts at disinformation, the West has every reason to be paranoid on the eve of the European election and the American presidential vote. Of course, it will not be easy to demonstrate that TikTok influences votes, but seeing the massive use that far-right candidates make of the application to flirt with young voters, we understand that there is an urgent need to plug the gaps in our old democracies. Europe, by opening a second investigation on April 22 targeting the social network in the space of two months, shows that it has the means to stand up.
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