There is excitement, you know, around TikTok: there is talk of bans more and more insistently. The growing popularity of the Chinese app among the world's youth masks real concerns about addiction, impact on mental health and body image.
Yet, the underlying reasons at the moment could be other. TikTok CEO, Shou Zi Chew, he recently faced a very harsh five-hour interrogation in the United States Congress. The message is clear: if you are a Chinese app you can run into a lot of problems. On the other hand, this isn't the first time this has happened, right?
Deja vu
The events of TikTok closely resemble those of Huawei and the issue of 5G. The security and privacy risks are plausible, but hard evidence is lacking. Underlying everything there seem to be other problems. Issues of trust, trade and geopolitics.
Curiously, while the hearing was taking place in the US, the UK extended the TikTok ban within parliament, having already banned it from government officials' work smartphones. Canada, the EU and some member states have also implemented partial bans. Where were you guys until yesterday?
A missed opportunity
Instead of taking the opportunity to discuss why democratic societies have allowed tech companies to make pervasive data collection and monitoring normal, politicians issue cross-bans. With the result of accelerating the fragmentation of the internet, always assuming that they don't want that.
TikTok makes money by collecting user data, come on. Show users the things they want to see, including offers from advertisers. Everyone does it, it's not like US platforms are lilies of the field. The difference? TikTok is especially good at this. Among American teenagers, 70% use TikTok, while only the 30% it can be found on Zuckerberg's social networks or on Twitter. Here you will find the data. Is that at least a "motive" for you?
The TikTok ban is "geopolitical"
What worries the US Congress (and "friendly" countries that have taken other measures) is not so much TikTok's business model, but data sharing. I'll make it short: Bytedance, parent company of TikTok, is Chinese: the US government thinks that the Chinese are stealing the data of American citizens. Also because China's own national security laws force companies to share data with the government.
The TikTok CEO's objections do not stop the frontal attack. Nor do the initiatives announced to reassure users and governments stop them (the Clover Project in the EU and the Texas Project in the USA require that user data be stored within their respective territories and that privacy practices are verified by third parties trust). So what?
As it was for Huawei, it may not be enough, especially if at the root of the problem there is a mistrust towards China, amplified by geopolitical and economic tensions. If you ask me, therefore: can the USA and other Western countries impose a ban on Tiktok? Ban him at all, kick him out?
Oh, yes they can. And the consequences would go far beyond the fate of the Chinese app.
TikTok comes out with a ban, Splinternet arrives
I won't hide it: TikTok is not a counterinformation site or a small independent app. It is a giant with 1 billion active users and 75 billion euros of assets.
His ban could spell the end of the internet as we know it, and give rise to the much-feared Splinternet which we have already mentioned. Shared infrastructure and lightweight digital architecture were once considered a commons. Today, geopolitics creeps into all layers of technical architecture, from undersea pipelines to semiconductors to emerging technology standards.
China and its companies, including Huawei, have put forward proposals that could radically change the architecture of the internet, fragmenting its common structure.
Step back
The Internet began by promising democracy and freedom. Advanced democracies could have seriously worked on it, faced a mature debate on how to keep a global internet together while respecting political differences, protecting freedom of expression and supporting the most vulnerable.
None of this: with formidable coherence, governments are transferring the same toxic dynamics onto the internet that they activated "outside".
The TikTok ban (not improbable, I repeat) are just the plastic representation of how the advantages of our shared digital architecture will be swept away by knee-jerk reactions and geopolitical tensions.
And it won't be much fun. A swipe will not be enough to go further.
