The United States is seriously considering banning TikTok on its territory and the French government, like others, prohibits its officials from using the app from their work phones. From an entertainment app, TikTok has become a real potential digital weapon of the Chinese government, so much so that the question of its outright ban is increasingly being raised.
The platform formula works: short videos that require little concentration. And this success is not going to stop. “By 2024, we expect to double the advertising revenue generated by TikTok worldwide,” predicts Stéphanie Laporte, director of social agency Media Otta.
The tool is designed to push users to be creative and retain them for as long as possible.
“It’s a weapon of mass distraction,” says Michael Stora, a psychoanalyst. “especially in minors”. TikTok has made space-time contraction its trademark. Users find themselves in “algorithmic bubbles” that confine them to their centers of interest and reinforce their opinions.
In a tense geopolitical context, the big question facing many governments and regulators is TikTok’s collection and use of user data.
The platform recognized that some of its Chinese employees had access to the data US and European users. TikTok has a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cell on its board as required by the country’s government.
For several months now, the bans have been linked. The United States, Canada, the European Commission, the European Parliament, Denmark or even the United Kingdom have prohibited their deputies from using the application on their work phone to avoid sending sensitive data to China.
For its part, TikTok strikes back. The TikTok CEO was heard by the US Congress on March 23 and came to defend the interests of the platform. Faced with a possible ban on TikTok in the United States, influencers have been mobilized by TikTok.
In France, Claude Malhuret, a senator, is at the initiative of a commission of inquiry in the Senate on the practices of TikTok. He should lead, by the summer, to recommendations regarding the framework of the platform.
Source: BFM TV
