TikTok has lost a major battle in Washington and its ban in the United States seems inevitable, even if the government has to be tactful before withdrawing the much-loved platform of 150 million Americans.
His boss, Shou Chew, faced rolling fire from attacks from a powerful parliamentary committee on Thursday with little real opportunity to respond.
The elected officials, who are extremely unanimous on both left and right, accuse TikTok, a subsidiary of China’s ByteDance, of using Beijing as a tool to spy on and manipulate Americans.
A hearing that ended in a “disaster” for the platform, believes Webdush Securities’ Dan Yves, who expects an increase in “calls from lawmakers and the White House to ban TikTok in the United States if ByteDance doesn’t part with the company.” separates”.
Unless ByteDance finds an American buyer in “three to six months,” he estimates that “TikTok will likely be banned by the end of the year.”
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre spoke on Thursday evening of “ongoing negotiations with ByteDance” and specified that the government “strongly supports” the RESTRICT Act, one of the bills banning TikTok.
The text, debated by senators this month, gives the Commerce Department new powers to ban technology that threatens national security.
On Friday morning, the conservative daily New York Post ran its front page, titled “TikTok’s Balance Sheet,” with a photo of the parents of a dead teenager who was present at Thursday’s hearing.
They recently filed a lawsuit against the platform, accusing it of showing their son thousands of unsolicited suicide videos.
“Your company has ruined your life,” Rep. Gus Bilirakis said, pointing to the family.
Confidentiality of user data, moderation of content led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), misinformation, addiction, dangerous challenges, mental and physical health of children and young people… The list of complaints from elected officials is long.
The platform tried to anticipate this with a pre-hearing campaign that highlighted its popularity in the United States, a “miscalculation,” according to Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg, which “reinforced the argument” made by lawmakers.
The 150 million users in the United States “are so many Americans that the CCP can gather sensitive information about, ultimately controlling what they see, hear, and believe,” claimed Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the committee’s chair.
TikTok has also urged influencers to defend the service that made them famous.
But “emphasizing TikTok’s economic impact is also a tricky strategy, since its growth has partly come at the expense of American companies like Meta. Instagram and YouTube would be the “first beneficiaries” of a ban in the US.
The United States has already attempted to Americanize or ban TikTok: former President Donald Trump, particularly angered by the content posted by users mocking him, has been linked to it in the name of national security, to no avail.
The current high tensions with China are bringing Republicans and Democrats together this time, and the voice seems free.
But freedom NGOs, some elected officials, and many pundits argue that TikTok poses essentially the same problems as Facebook, Twitter, and the others.
“From a security perspective, we could certainly come up with a solution that minimizes the perceived risks,” Michael Daniel, director of the Cyber Threat Alliance, a cybersecurity NGO, told AFP.
“But would that be satisfactory for politicians? That’s another question.”
A ban would mean that “the United States, as a democracy, is taking steps that limit the ability of young voters (TikTok users) to express themselves and make a living,” says Sarah Kreps, law professor and director of the Tech Policy Institute.
“Given the cost of such a decision and its limited benefits,” she continues, “legislators should first consider effective privacy laws and risk control strategies, such as Project Texas,” TikTok’s proposed compromise to protect American data.
“We are committed to providing a safe and inclusive platform,” TikTok Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Pappas tweeted on Thursday. “It’s a shame that the conversation today seemed to be about xenophobia.”