Tiktok is now so big that the companies behind it have geopolitical influence. The government in the USA deeply distrusts the app – but is Tiktok actually a Chinese propaganda weapon?
“NZZ accent”: Tiktok: How much China is in it?
Autor
Antonia Moser, Alice Grosjean
Listen and subscribe to the podcast “NZZ Kompakt” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Castbox.
Do you have any feedback on the podcast? Give us your opinion.
In this podcast episode:
At the end of January this year, Shou Zi Chew sits in the American Congress and answers one question after another. The Tiktok CEO is actually invited to speak about the safety of children on social networks. Instead, he is literally interrogated; the atmosphere is charged and irritable. Mistrust of Tiktok has reached a new peak in the USA: the app is now even to be banned.
Tiktok itself has headquarters in Singapore and the USA, but the Chinese parent company Bytedance is subject to Chinese law. This gives the Chinese government far-reaching rights, says technology editor Gioia da Silva in “NZZ Akent”: “The government could, for example, force Tiktok to hand over certain user data.”
The Western fear of such scenarios is real, as the Tiktok CEO hearing in Washington shows. There is no hard evidence of China’s influence, says da Silva in the podcast. But there is increasing evidence that the platform is censoring certain content and amplifying other, China-friendly content. And that also influences the 1.5 billion users who use Tiktok every day.
You can find all episodes of “NZZ Kompakt” in this overview.