A group of prominent Republican U.S. senators on Wednesday, July 29, asked Donald Trump’s administration to look into the TikTok app. They believe that this very popular social network could be used to interfere in the presidential elections on November 3.
The Ministry of the Treasury will do ” this week “ recommendations to Donald Trump concerning possible measures to be taken, announced the Secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin. Raising this subject before a trip to Texas, Donald Trump said “Think about a decision”.
Indeed, TikTok “Is the subject of a CFIUS investigation”, Mr Mnuchin added. The CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States) is an agency that ensures that foreign investments do not present risks to national security.
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A platform for debate
Launched four years ago, the TikTok application has gained momentum in 2019 and 2020. This social network, although led by the American Kevin Mayer, is headquartered by a large Chinese company, ByteDance, located in Beijing. This is in fact the version intended for the international market of the Douyin application, created in China by ByteDance.
This video sharing app is very popular among teenagers today. According to the company App Annie, the social network has around 800 million active users worldwide.
TikTok regularly defends itself against its ties to China and the Chinese government and has always denied sharing its data with authorities. But in the United States and other countries, the application is accused of collusion with Beijing. Critics suspect the company is disclosing the personal information of its users to the Chinese government.
In a letter dated Tuesday, July 28, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, his Arkansas colleague Tom Cotton and other lawmakers accuse TikTok of censoring certain content, including a video denouncing the plight of the Uighur minority by China . The letter also reports attempts by Beijing to manipulate the political debate in the United States.
“We are very concerned that [le Parti communiste chinois] can use their control over TikTok to distort or manipulate speech [politiques] in order to sow discord among Americans and obtain the result he expects ”, they write in this letter to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), the Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Director of the FBI.
In the opposing camp on Tuesday, Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s campaign manager Dana Remus called on the entire campaign team to uninstall the TikTok app from their phones, saying it could pose a security risk for people. teams involved in the November presidential elections.
TikTok defends itself
A spokesperson for TikTok said the popular teen video app has a very strict disinformation policy. He added that the moderation of content on the site, carried out by a team based in California, was not subject to the influence of any government.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said China has no particular interest in the electoral process in the United States and called for an end to targeting Chinese companies.
TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer announced in a blog post on Wednesday that the company will be transparent about the algorithms that determine what content users see when they use the app. The business leader also called on other major social networks to follow the example set by TikTok.
A disguised response to the comments of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook who must be heard by American elected officials on Wednesday, and whose intervention published in advance on Tuesday contains a veiled attack on companies at the hands of Chinese investors.
Ban or buyout?
US President Donald Trump said in early July that he was studying the possibility of banning the TikTok application. A week later, a White House adviser said the social network could be sold by its parent company to free itself from it. Larry Kudlow, Donald Trump’s economic adviser explained on CNBC:
“We haven’t made a final decision, but as has been reported here and there, I think TikTok will leave the holding which is Chinese [ByteDance] and operate as an independent business. “
According to the Reuters news agency, several American investors have approached ByteDance to make takeover offers to the Chinese company.
