Tik Tok supporters are seen outside the U.S. Capitol before the House passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, that could ban TikTok in the U.S.
Tik Tok supporters are seen outside the U.S. Capitol before the House passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, that could ban TikTok in the U.S. Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/ZUMA

–Analysis–

PARIS — When the first threats to ban the social network TikTok appeared in the United States, one U.S. lawmaker worried about being “hated by an entire generation!”

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Founded in 2016, TikTok is indeed the singular standout social network of recent years, with more than one billion users around the world, the majority of whom are young people, with another one billion if we count the Chinese version Douyin. The United States, meanwhile, counts 170 million TikTok users, compared to the 20 million in France.

But TikTok is Chinese, and that’s the problem. And those same problems are spreading outside the United States. India and its billion-and-a-half inhabitants banned TikTok in 2020, two weeks after a deadly incident on the Chinese border. For Delhi, the app posed a security risk.

Security arguments 

The debate has been ongoing in the United States for three years. Last week, the House of Representatives adopted a resolution to force the Chinese owner of TikTok to sell its U.S. subsidiary. The bill must still be approved by the Senate to become a law, which feeds an already tough showdown of lobbyists, not to mention the young TikTok users making themselves heard to save “their” network.

On the surface, the network’s detractors have some security arguments: on the personal data of 170 million U.S. users which could end up in China despite TikTok’s promises; on the possibility of using its powerful algorithm to influence Americans in their political choices, as Facebook did in 2016, during the election of Donald Trump; some add to this how addictive TikTok is for young people, who can spend hours scrolling through short videos.

But would U.S. elected officials ask themselves these questions if TikTok was not Chinese? There is obviously a Cold War feel to this campaign against TikTok, and even a hint of McCarthyism — as when the boss of TikTok, Singapore’s Shou Zi Chew, was interviewed in Congress.

Shou Zi Chew, CEO of TikTok, leaves a meeting in Sen. John Fetterman's office in the Russell Senate Office building on Thursday, March 14, 2024.
u003cpu003eShou Zi Chew, CEO of TikTok, leaves a meeting in Sen. John Fetterman’s office in the Russell Senate Office building on Thursday, March 14, 2024.u003c/pu003e – u003cpu003eBill Clark/CQ Roll Cal/u003ca href=u0022http://www.zuma24.com/u0022 target=u0022_blanku0022u003eZUMAu003c/au003eu003c/pu003e

What Europe could do

So, what’s happening with TikTok in Europe?

“When will the debate take place here?”, asked yesterday a Frenchman attentive to this subject. A commission of inquiry of French senators has already worked on TikTok and submitted a report last year: they were also concerned about the lack of transparency, recommended banning TikTok from the smartphones of personnel called upon to play a role in case of crisis, and recommended “the introduction of a sixty-minute blocking period for minors”.

The European Commission has just announced the opening of an investigation into the protection of minors, a subject of concern throughout the world.

But we come back to the central question: banning or restricting TikTok but allowing other social networks to flourish under the pretext that they are American is missing the point. It is the economic model of social networks that makes them harmful for teenagers — and also for democracy. So be careful not to miss the social network forest for the TikTok tree.