“Regarding the spread of TikTok, we are concerned about the national security of the country,” said the FBI director, Chris Wray, spoke at the University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. The Chinese application, which in 2021 surpassed Meta’s social networks for the number of monthly downloads, would be “in the hands of a government that does not share our values”, reported the number one of the US federal agency. According to the intelligence of Washington the Chinese government would be able to manipulate the algorithm of the app making the entertainment portal a source of useful data for the Party of Beijing but not only. The US services think that through ad hoc videos the American public can be influenced in their choices. Chris Wray also raised his concerns in Congress last month.
Trump’s precedent
Already in 2020 the administration of the President Trump he had spoken of a possible ban on ByteDance, the Beijing-based company that manages the social network. The former president then pushed the company to sell the platform to American companies, but without success. Also in that year, the Indian government had also made TikTok illegal because it was considered “too dangerous”. In these hours, however, the TikTok spokesman, Brooke Oberwtter, released a statement saying “company top management is working with US government officials to address all reasonable concerns of the Biden administration” and concluded by saying he was “confident about a future settlement.” In the note, the representative of the social network wanted to reiterate that the Chinese company is private and that the government has no access to the database.
Russia against social media, after Facebook also blocks Twitter
by Raffaella Menichini
TikTok has reached dizzying numbers in just a few years. In 2017 it had 65 million subscribers while in 2021, the year of the boom, it exceeded one billion downloads.