The Senate TikTok Investigative Commission comes to an end this Thursday, July 6 and has issued a series of reservations about the application. At the end of these four months of investigation, it becomes clear that many unanswered questions remain about the Chinese app used by more than a billion people.
The report is unequivocal: TikTok’s lack of transparency is massive, and the findings are alarming.
Despite the questions asked during the survey, about relations with China, data transfers or even the economic model of the company, the different interlocutors did not provide new answers. “Throughout these exchanges, the company and its representatives have endeavored to maintain this opacity to which the TikTok group is accustomed and withhold any information that is not yet public,” the report read.
Between the lines, it is the influence of the Chinese government that is at the center of the concerns. If the TikTok representatives heard by the commission firmly affirmed that there was “a total separation” of Chinese activities and those of the rest of the world, the report is much less optimistic.
limit damage
As for user data, “ByteDance and TikTok leaders are no longer denying the proven facts of user data transfers to China, but are instead seeking to minimize the scope,” the report explains.
Having long held a “cool” position on these data transfers, TikTok and its image were damaged by a BuzzFeed investigation in June 2022, which revealed that “everything [était] heard in China. The denial of the facts has given way, therefore, to an attempt to limit the damage, communicating only the information revealed in the public space.
In broad strokes, the hearings of Eric Garandeau, Director of Public Affairs, and Marlène Masure, Director of Operations France, were just a series of evasions and well-known assertions, including voluntary withholding of information. During the press conference, the president Mickaël Vallet also regretted on several occasions that the leaders of the social network did not accede to the multiple requests of the commission.
“It was only after several written exchanges that a complete organization chart was finally provided, with the exception of a single person, whom the rapporteur had to identify because he did not appear in any of the documents presented. Company President: Ms. Zhao Tian”
After the hearing of Eric Garandeau, director of public affairs for the platform, the latter also reportedly indicated by email to the Commission that “Madame Zhao Tian will be replaced by a president of European origin.” Often mentioned throughout the exchanges of this commission, Zhao Tian, the current chairman, is in fact a Chinese national and is therefore subject to the rules of the Chinese Communist Party, which require the constant collaboration of his citizens and nationals.
“Nobody understands”
The Commission has also not been able to access information on the business model of the company, which declares advertising revenues that are much lower than those published by the social networks with the lowest audience.
For André Gattolin, Senator Renacimiento and Commission participant, the few statements made by TikTok cast “complete doubt on the viability of the economic model, which [me] suggests that it is not an economic company, but a political one, with a vocation to collect personal data around the world. […] Nobody understands how this business works.”
The question of personal data is also obviously at the center of the fears expressed by the commission. The report notes that “regarding the storage and transfers abroad of user data, and the reasons for these transfers, TikTok has chosen to maintain secrecy.” Questions about the use of personal data, the volume of which the app requests is particularly high, have been “consistently dodged” by TikTok representatives.
A planned suspension
In short, the number of questions about the favorite application of young people is far from having decreased. The commission raises the question of a suspension, in case, on January 1, TikTok does not achieve the requested transparency. Such a suspension will also be possible under the DSA, effective August 27.
For the speaker, Claude Malhuret, the blocking of the application would be justified by the number of breaches of transparency by TikTok, and the potential risk generated by data transfers. The report also points more broadly to a more complex agenda on the part of the company, which would no longer be economic, but political.
“According to some analysts, TikTok represents an ‘international shock force’ that the Chinese regime could use to ‘weaken the resistance’ of a global youth that, in a few years, will constitute the main competitor of a Chinese society and productive fabric” . force in search of hegemony and greater international recognition,” the report says.
The recommendations issued at the end of these four months of investigative commissions must now be taken up, either by the government or by working groups. They will also be closely linked with the DSA implementation at the end of August.
Source: BFM TV
