On Wednesday March 13, 2024, members of the United States House of Representatives adopted a bill whichthreatens the existence of TikTokat Uncle Sam's. For the moment, the text must still be validated by the Senate.
Since TikTok operates in the United States, the social network is often attacked by various American authorities. The platform is particularly singled out for having made many young people dependent on its application, in particular by optimizing its suggestion algorithms,sometimes in a questionable way.
The other accusation whichcommonly comes upis thatthe Chinese government uses the application to spy on, and possibly manipulate, American citizens.These latter arguments are partly those for whichTikTok risks being permanently banned from the App Store, Play Store and hosting services in the USA.The question of banning TikTok has been raised by the American authorities for a long time. However, over time it lost ground, until the events of October gained momentum in the media landscape.
As Le Monde points out on this subject:
the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, relaunched attacks against the application used by 170 million Americans, due to the surge of videos deemed pro-Palestinian on the social network.
From now on, if the Senate validates the vote of the deputies, TikTok will be banned or sold. There remains in fact an alternative to the social network to continue operating, which is toseparate from its parent company ByteDance within 6 months.Investors are already there, ready to take control. We are talking in particular about Bobby Kotick, who has just left Blizzard.
The American authorities consider ByteDance, which currently owns TikTok, to be under the thumb of the Chinese government. Mikie Sherrill, an MP who voted for the bill, said just before the vote:
«It is very dangerous that the Chinese Communist Party controls a vital information source for millions of Americans, including many teenagers and children whose mental health has been affected by the app". Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak reacted to this affair and was a bit critical of the chamber's decision.
Hypocrisy according to the creator of Apple
In an interview with CNN, Steve Wozniak said he was grateful for the efforts put in place by the American authorities to ensure his confidentiality. On the other hand, he still points the fingera certain “hypocrisy”in the case concerning the ban on TikTok. The man says: “but my god, look at what we're accusing TikTok of, then look at Facebook and Google. This is how they do their business».
According to him, the GAFAMall operate identically to TikTok, and the model that the chamber points to was designed by these same web giants, but are notnever worried about their practices.
Everyone must be in the same boat
The Cupertino pioneer continues by advocating a certain fairness between different countries and companies. According to him, there is no reason to ban one application and not another. Wozniak's speech echoes therecent actions of the White House, who spies on certain citizens illegally, and whoalso strongly supports the bill.
We also remember that this same chamber, which wants to exclude TikTok, had passed a law to grant itself the right to monitor global communications without a warrant, includingincluding those of the French.
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By : Keleops AG
