TikTok: controversies that affect Chinese app over a billion users

The pinnacle of mobile entertainment, a spy tool serving Beijing, or both? The TikTok phenomenon has made the social media world obsolete. social mediabut the app is already in the crosshairs of several states that want to limit its impact.

Its chief executive, Show Zi Chu, promised at a congressional hearing on Thursday that by the end of the year, all information relating to the country’s 150 million users will be processed exclusively from servers located in the United States.

But he acknowledged that the platform, a subsidiary of the Chinese group bytedancestill stores old user data from the US on servers accessible to Chinese employees as US lawmakers accuse them of endangering national security.

Under pressure –

tik tak was first banned in India in 2020 following deadly clashes at the border with China.

That same year, the app was also threatened with a ban in the US by President Donald Trump, who accused it of being a spy.

social network then admitted, after a BuzzFeed article, that employees based in China they had access to data relating to US users, but were protected from sharing it with the Chinese Communist Party.

In an attempt to ensure data security, the company promised US and European users to store them on its territory with local partners.

In 2023, the US federal government and the European Commission banned the download and use of tik tak on the work devices of your employees. Now Washington is pushing for a broader ban.

The British Parliament announced a ban on Thursday tik tak on all your devices and networks, following a similar move by the UK government a week earlier.

billion users

None of these measures have so far stopped the rapid growth tik tak. The platform has over 1 billion active users worldwide, including 125 million in the European Union.

According to We Are Social’s latest report on the evolution of the digital world, published in January, it ranks as the sixth most popular social platform.

tik tak it also registers the strongest growth, especially among the youngest.

Above all, tik tak it surpasses all its competitors in its ability to attract attention. In 2023, Android users used it for an average of 23 hours and 28 minutes per month.

YouTube or Meta (Facebook’s parent company, Instagram) have tried to imitate their ultra-short video format, but so far without much success.

opaque algorithm

TikTok has managed to attract a lot of influencers, in particular, thanks to its advanced video editing features, creative filters, and a powerful algorithm that can quickly raise new stars.

These tiktokers such as Khaby Lame, Charli d’Amelio and Bella Poarch are some of the most famous ones and have caught the attention of many brands.

But the algorithm tik tak it is still opaque.

In January, Forbes magazine reported that employees tik tak And bytedance they regularly used the button to increase the number of views of certain content.

In accordance with tik takwhich recently announced the launch of a feature that allows you to find out what makes one video stand out from others, manual promotion affects only a small part of the recommendations.

Disinformation

As with other social networks, tik tak faces the problem of content moderation. She is regularly accused of posting numerous disinformation videos, dangerous calls and sexually suggestive images when she should ban nudity. In October 2022, the “trend” was to post images of penises, as news site Numerama discovered.

On the other hand, the media reported that several children have died after attempting to reenact the Blackout Challenge, a viral challenge that involves testing how long a contestant can last without breathing.

In addition, as NewsGuard reported in September 2022, 20% of the videos circulating on tik tak on current issues (Russian invasion of Ukraine, US school shootings, covid-19 vaccines) were false or misleading.

The AFP news agency, like more than a dozen fact-checking organizations, receives payments from tik tak in several Spanish-speaking countries in Asia and Oceania, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America to check videos that could potentially contain false information.

tik tak it removes them if the AFP groups prove that the information passed is false. (AFP)