Tik Tok .. The common enemy of Silicon Valley and the US administration

Silicon Valley and the US government seem to have found a common enemy in the application of Tik Tok, the Chinese social networking application that has become one of the first real threats to US domination. According to lawmakers, Tik Tok could indeed pose a threat to US national security.

Silicon Valley
Tik Tok's success confirms that China is emerging as a digital superpower, prompting Silicon Valley companies to wake up and try to nip this renaissance in the bud, either by warning of Chinese censorship or coming up with better products.

Facebook, for example, tried to mimic Tik Tok by launching Lasso, which emulates the work of Tik Tuk but has produced disappointing results, with fewer than half a million downloads, mostly in Mexico.

YouTube has also taken steps to integrate video editing tools into its service to rival Tik Tok.

Snapchat, the developer of the Snapchat application, poses a direct threat to them, although it says they are not competitors at all, even though both applications target the same young audience. Especially in adolescents.

Last year, TikTuk was downloaded more than 750 million times globally.For comparison, in the same period, Facebook was downloaded 715 million times, Instagram 450 million times, YouTube 300 million times, and Snapchat 275 million times.

US National Security
US politicians are particularly concerned about Tik Tok. The US Treasury Department's Foreign Investment Committee has launched a national security investigation at Paytec, the owner of the Tech Talk app, especially with regard to its acquisition of music developer ME Musica Inc. of the same name.

Musica.le was acquired in 2017 for $ 1 billion, and has since become a tik-tuk that allows users to make and merge short videos with music that any tik-tuk user can watch.

Experts fear, according to Technology Review, that Tik Tok would share US teenagers' data with the CPC or that the application could become a source of misinformation controlled by China.

Three US senators have called for an investigation, and the US Foreign Investment Committee is now considering whether it is acceptable for Byte Dance to acquire Musica.

There are also reports that the Islamic State is spreading its propaganda through the application, and an investigation by the British Guardian newspaper reports that Tik Tok removes videos that are contrary to the "directives of the Chinese government and the Communist Party," including those concerning Tibet independence, or protests in Hong Kong.

The Tik Tok administration has refused to appear before the US Congressional Committee to investigate its links with the Chinese government. It maintains that all data is stored in the United States and that there is a backup server in Singapore, not China.