If Tik Tok is a threat, so are other platforms

TikTok, the short-video social media app, poses no ordinary danger to Canadians.

- DAVID OLIVE

TikTok “is a threat to the way we live,” David Vigneault, director of Canada’s top spy agency, told the CBC earlier this month.

The Communist Party of China (CPC) collects TikTok’s user data and from it creates artificial intelligence, CSIS says.

On April 24, U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law a ban on TikTok’s U.S. operations by Jan. 19 if TikTok isn’t sold by its Chinese parent, ByteDance, to a non-Chinese owner.

That was after Congressional passage of the bill. Among those voting in favour of it was Rep. Elise Stefanik, who said, “TikTok is Communist Chinese malware that is poisoning the minds of our next generation.”

If TikTok is brainwashing North Americans so are the other algorithm-driven social media platforms. And TikTok would go on doing so under non-Chinese ownership.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has ducked the question of whether Ottawa would follow suit in banning TikTok.

But he heartily endorses Vigneault’s warning.

“I would absolutely not recommend someone have TikTok,” says Trudeau, who has inveighed against the app more than once.

Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Australia and other countries have already banned the use of TikTok on government mobile devices.

Their rationale is that Beijing could spy on TikTok users and influence entire populations on crucial matters like elections.

But Vigneault and others who warn that TikTok abets the CPC don’t say how that influence might manifest itself.