In front of the TikTok administration in Culver City, California
Photo: AFP/Patrick T. Fallon
TikTok is currently at the center of a fierce political controversy in the United States. The social media platform, which can be used to share short videos, is particularly popular with young people. According to the Sprout Social portal, TikTok was the most downloaded app in the USA in the first quarter of 2022.
What initially sounds like harmless fun has a catch in the eyes of politicians and security authorities: TikTok belongs to the Chinese technology group ByteDance. The fear is that the data of millions of users from the USA could fall into the hands of the Chinese state.
For the Republicans in particular, who took over the majority in the House of Representatives in November, the case is a godsend. Because not only China, but also the domestic technology industry is now one of their favorite enemy images. For many conservatives it is clear that large US Internet companies such as Google and Microsoft are firmly on the side of the Democrats and censor the Internet in their interests. In particular, the blocking of President Donald Trump’s user accounts on Twitter and Facebook after his numerous outbursts and tirades has reinforced this impression.
In Washington DC, TikTok CEO Shou Chew has now been summoned before the House Energy and Trade Committees. This follows a few days after a decision by the Foreign Investment Committee. The agency, which oversees economic ties with potential national security implications, offers TikTok two options: either sell it to a US owner or ban the product in the US. The same agency had previously forced the sale of LGBTQ dating app Grindr, also owned by China, in 2019, CNN reported. The procedure against TikTok is therefore not a new process.
The chair of the Commerce Committee, Republican Cathy McMorris Rodgers, was not sparing in criticizing the platform ahead of Thursday’s hearing. »People in the USA have the right to know whether their privacy is endangered by TikTok’s (…) relationship with China and whether data is being manipulated. What’s worse, we know that big tech companies like TikTok are using malicious algorithms to exploit children for profit and expose them to dangerous content online,” McMorris Rodgers said in a press release. “We need to find out what measures the company is taking to protect our children online and offline.” The politician emphasized that she was looking forward to the direct exchange with Chew. His hearing continues the committee’s work to “summon the heads of major tech companies and question them about their companies’ destructive business practices.”
Such statements prove that the days when Washington read every wish from the lips of the tech industry as the future economic engine of the USA are probably finally over, after President Trump’s administration had already taken a tougher stance towards Silicon Valley. Ironically, the bitter partisan polarization of the Trump years has probably led to the fact that the market power of technology companies is now receiving serious political attention. And the escalating geopolitical conflict with China means that, for the first time in a long time, US politicians are taking privacy concerns seriously – at least rhetorically. Concerns that the app could be used to spread Chinese propaganda to US teenagers also play a role. US President Donald Trump had already attempted to ban the app in the US in 2020. TikTok, on the other hand, had taken legal action.
How big the real danger of espionage is is difficult to judge even for experts. At least some IT security specialists see the potential for misuse: »Even for someone who researches it, it is not easy to disassemble and analyze these apps«, says Lindsay Gorman from the Alliance for Securing Democracy of the German Marshall Fund, one transatlantic think tanks from Washington DC, opposite the news channel CNBC. “As a society, we haven’t decided to restrict the sale of apps if they collect too much data.” This responsibility cannot be passed on to individual consumers. Other analysts are more skeptical. “There are reservations about China,” James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told CNN. “But I’m not sure TikTok is a valuable spy tool (for the Chinese government).”
At a conference of the business journal Harvard Business Review, TikTok boss Chew rejected the allegations against the company: “The Chinese government has never asked us for user data from the USA. And as we have already officially announced, we would also reject such a request, even if it were made to us.« It is doubtful whether these promises will convince the members of the trade committee.