TikTok: addiction, non-compliance with the rules… can France bring the Chinese network to heel?

While the United States regularly takes action against TikTokFrance seemed until then to watch all this from afar.

But things could well change. The conclusions of a parliamentary inquiry, presented today by Senator Claude Malhuret, are quite damning for the platform. The latter, at a minimum, has good reason to worry about her future in France, given the list of grievances presented by the senator.

The Chinese government in the crosshairs

Claude Malhuret had a lot on his heart. The rapporteur of the commission of inquiry on TikTok did not actually have much positive to say about the platform. He began by criticizing the posture of the latter, which he calls ” opaque transparency “. He thus underlined the large gap between the public protests of the social network which tries to convince of its transparency and the difficulty, even the impossibility, of obtaining answers to many questions that the parliamentarians were able to ask him.

But it’s not so much posture that’s a problem, judging by the senator’s other grievances. Chief among them, as in the United States, is of course the suspicion of interference or espionage on the part of the Chinese government. If the investigation does not demonstrate this formally, it underlines at least that the contrary would be unlikely. First because, contrary to what its spokespersons outside of China claim, the social network cannot be completely independent of its parent company. As Malhuret explains, “ the main technical operations are carried out in China. The thousands of patents filed belong to the parent company, the algorithm and the engineers are in China “.

He also notes that with 1 billion users worldwide, including 22 million in France, “ the Chinese authorities cannot fail to take an interest in this. It would be professional misconduct on the part of their services “. Finally, he is surprised that TikTok is still not profitable and operating at a loss, unlike its competitors, which would be surprising if its objective was nothing more than profitability.

Misinformation, respect for the law… TikTok has its work cut out for it

However, the parliamentarians do not only blame TikTok for its real or supposed links with China, and have their sights set on a number of practices on the platform.
The fight against disinformation would be almost non-existent there. On average, 40 minutes of use are enough to be offered misleading videos dealing with current events. A study by Global Witness shows that 90% of disinformation content is approved by the platform. Even Facebook is only 20%.

In addition, the investigation report points to TikTok’s personal data practices. Five years after arriving in France, the social network still does not respect the rules and is the worst student among the main social networks, far behind Google and Meta, yet multi condemned in the matter. And the list does not end there. The platform is also accused of not respecting intellectual property in music. She is accused of intellectual piracy by SACEM, and her addictive practices are also singled out.

After the example of the United States, TikTok has an interest in taking the conclusions of this investigation really seriously to avoid at least colossal fines and, at most, an outright ban in France.

Sources: Public Senate on Twitter, South West