Four years later, and again in election time, we are at the same point: in 2020, the Trump administration tried to block TikTok in the United States; in 2024, the Biden administration she would be ready to do the same thing.
There is a reason that is cited publicly as the decisive one for this choice, even if in reality it has little foundation, then there are some a couple of others (more realistic) which are somewhat silenced. And there is a fourth which is very little talked about, but which could have a certain weight and has to do with the world of information.
The case
E se TikTok se lo comprassero Bobby Kotick e Sam Altman?
by Emanuele Capone
tiktok: the video of the company’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, on the possible ban
TikTok ban, the stated reason and the real reasons
Let’s start with the first, the one talked about by the deputies of the Chamber who voted for the bill and support it: TikTok would be “a threat to national security”. Which is a bit strange to hear American politicians say, given that the Democrats (the party has an official profile), the Republicans and even President Biden are on TikTok: if the app was really “a security threat national”, wouldn’t it be better for the head of state to stay away from it? There are two cases: either TikTok is not “a threat to national security,” or Biden is exposed to a risk and should be notified.
There is a connection to this the “our data is not safe” story, meaning the personal information of the approximately 170 million Americans who have a profile on TikTok. This too has little basis in reality: for over 2 years now (yes, two years), i data from American TikTok users they are on servers that are on American soil and are managed by Oracle. Which is an American company, not a Chinese one.
Likewise, perhaps it is worth remembering that i European user data of the ByteDance social platform are preserved in Ireland and Norway and are supervised by NCC. Which is a British company, not a Chinese one.
It is understood that the reasons for the (possible) ban of TikTok in the United States are different. Specifically, the app is part of the growing tensions between the US and China, the same ones that years ago led to the sensational boycott of Huawei, and is also evidently seen as a dangerous nuisance by Meta and Google. For 4 years now, TikTok has been in fierce competition with Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, which have repeatedly added features in an attempt to slow down its popularity. Facebook, Instagram and YouTube which among others they do with our data more or less what TikTok does, with the difference that they are American and not of Chinese origin. And perhaps this is the real problem.
Biden, the blocking of TikTok and the risk of America becoming China
by Riccardo Luna
Learn about TikTok, risks and opportunities
As mentioned, another point to consider could be the increasingly important role that TikTok is taking on as a source of informationnot only in the United States: according to one recent research from the Pew Research Center (this), over 40% of American TikTok users use it to search for news. They use it to get information, to do what twenty years ago was done exclusively with newspapers.
This data is up by more than 20 points compared to 2020 (it has more than doubled in 3 years), it is higher than that of all other platforms except Twitter, it is one of the few of its kind to be growing and above all it means that now over 30% of all Americans under 30 access TikTok specifically looking for news. In 2020 they were just 9%.
These are notable numbers and notable growth percentages that fit into a delicate sector that is experiencing a delicate moment: Facebook and Google are considering reducing the space given to news (or even removing the News tab from search results) as leverage to convince publishers to withdraw their claims about being paid for content, however people are already stopping searching for news on Facebook and Google, which somewhat disarms businesses in Menlo Park and Mountain View. At the same time, publishers, whose tug-of-war with Facebook and Google has been going on for years, are realizing that not only can they use TikTok to create informative content organic to the platformeffective and which can bring a lot of visibility to their newspapers, but also that people are actively looking for that content.
At this point, coming to the conclusion that the platform controlled by ByteDance, rather than “a threat to national security” is a threat to the economic interests of some Silicon Valley giants, is anything but far-fetched. And imagining that Washington intervenes, in a world (like the American one) dominated by lobbies, pressure groups, power groups, is not political fantasy but realism.
#news #reason #ban #TikTok
– 2024-03-31 11:36:21
