TikTok is at the heart of the US election season

The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a draft law forcing the Chinese owner of the TikTok application to sell it or else ban it in the United States (Anatolia)

The US House of Representatives’ vote on a draft law forcing the Chinese company “ByteDance” to sell TikTok to an American company opened a new chapter in the war between China and the United States before a presidential election in which US President Joe Biden is running with an active account on the Chinese application, even as he promises to sign a law banning it. Meanwhile, his opponent, Donald Trump, turned into a fierce defender of TikTok after previously supporting its ban.

The Spanish newspaper "El Pais" wrote a long report entitled, "Tik Tok confronts Washington... If they ban the application, they will eliminate the American dream."

El Pais points to a new pressure force in America consisting of content makers on Tik Tok, dozens of whom flocked to Washington to persuade representatives to reject the draft law, including Giovanna Gonzalez, who is followed by 200,000 people. She accuses the Council of trying to ban the tool that allowed her to live “her passion for financial studies.” By working full-time as a content creator and paid lecturer.”

But the efforts of Jovanna and her colleagues failed, as the Council voted for the draft law requiring the company that owns ByteDance to sell the application to an American company, under penalty of banning it from application stores, in the latest chapter of the conflict between the United States and China.

Congressional consensus

The Spanish newspaper says that despite the penetration of TikTok into American society (about 170 million people use it), confronting it is one of the few things that brought together legislators from both parties, so they approved the draft law with a majority, despite the torrent of communications they received from content makers who were urged by TikTok to communicate with their elected representatives. To get them to change their minds, and also despite a visit to the Capitol by Xu Zhizhu, CEO of TikTok, in which he said, “No one could explain to me in detail the sin we committed.”

After the bill was passed in the House of Representatives, TikTok is trying to put pressure on the Senate, and has sent a letter to content creators calling on them to tell the members of the Senate about the importance of the application.

TikTok is not the first company to employ its users to put pressure on lawmakers, but its ferocity in this campaign is unprecedented, according to the Spanish newspaper.

One of the ironies that El Pais points out is that President Biden - who promised to sign the TikTok ban law if it was passed - opened an account for his campaign on the application to attract members of Generation Z who use social media extensively, but he agrees with cybersecurity experts who state that Byte Dance is forced, by virtue of the Chinese espionage law, to share its users’ data with the Chinese authorities if they request it, not to mention fears of disinformation campaigns and influencing public opinion during an election season, which raises the concerns of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). any).

El Pais quoted Chinese technology expert Paul Triolo as saying that critics did not provide concrete examples of TikTok’s risks to American national security, as “the personal data that users voluntarily provide does not appear to be a threat, and there is no evidence that the Chinese government wants or can force ByteDance.” TikTok is changing the way algorithms work, and even if it did, users would easily know that.”

“ByteDance” has repeatedly denied sharing its data with the Chinese authorities, and raises the slogan of freedom of opinion to defend itself, and also points to the huge economic impact on users such as a cosmetics company, one of whose owners says: “We are not only on TikTok, but our business is thriving thanks to it.” If they acknowledge "This bill will destroy the American dream."

Electoral bloc

Among the 65 representatives who voted against the bill (most of them Democrats) is Representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost, who is the youngest member of the Council (27 years old).

Alejando warned of an electoral bloc that both parties might lose with this vote, and recalled that although 72% of Americans support - according to one poll - greater regulation of technology companies, especially what they do with their data, only 31% of them support banning TikTok, according to another poll last month. .

The United States banned ministers and employees from using TikTok in almost all government departments, as did many countries, including Britain and Belgium, and bodies and blocs such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

But what concerns technology journalist Kara Swisher is not TikTok's threat to national security, but rather its propaganda potential, saying that it is like handing over ownership of all cable channels to a foreign government.

She adds that TikTok is more powerful than CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News combined.

ByteDance is counting on the courts to overturn the law, which responded to a lawsuit filed by the former US president in 2020 to ban TikTok, but El Pais recalls that Trump lacked the support of the Senate at the time.

According to the Spanish newspaper, one of the results of that failure was - however - ByteDance was forced to store its users’ data in servers in Texas supervised by the giant company “Oracle”, in addition to arduous negotiations that the Chinese company was engaged in with a body called the “Foreign Investment Agency in The United States is mandated to monitor companies that may pose a threat to national security.

Trump is now opposing the ban on TikTok, because he fears - according to him - the growing power of the “Meta” company, owner of the WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook applications, which he describes as an enemy of the people after its accounts were suspended in the wake of the famous attack on the Capitol.

El Pais quotes American press reports indicating another reason. One of ByteDance's most important shareholders is Jeff Yass, who owns 15% of the company's shares. He is one of the most important financiers of Trump's election campaign, and the former president is considering appointing him as Secretary of the Treasury if he returns to power.

Secret weapon

El Pais explains that if a law is issued requiring ByteDance to sell Tik Tok, the Chinese company - whose market value was estimated last December at $225 billion - must complete the sale within 6 months under penalty of banning the application, whose market value is not precisely known. Among those who have expressed interest in purchasing it is Steven Mnuchin, former Treasury Secretary in the Trump administration.

But even if the TikTok application is sold, the biggest problem remains unsolved, which is its most important secret weapon: algorithms that cannot be sold without the permission of the Chinese authorities.

Chinese technology expert Triolo rules out Beijing agreeing to transfer or give up the license for TikTok's artificial intelligence algorithms, but he wonders, "Who will pay what TikTok asks for without access to this secret?"

It reminds us of other difficulties surrounding the transfer of technology, even assuming Beijing’s approval, or because those who developed it are in China.

The Spanish newspaper concludes its report by pointing out one of the most important unknowns if the sale is made, which is the impact of the new algorithms, if developed, on about 7 million companies whose business is based on TikTok.

El Pais cites as an example Carlos Eduardo Espina, a content creator who says that his income on social media networks last year amounted to $1.28 million, 60% of which was from TikTok alone.

Source: Spanish El Pais