US President Joe Biden signed a law this week giving TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance nine to 12 months to sell the popular video-sharing app or face a ban. The company has vowed to fight this in the courts. How might the showdown play out, and what does it mean for TikTok users globally? FRANCE 24's Tech Editor Peter O'Brien tells us more.
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00:00 It's going to be very difficult to find a buyer willing to shell out that much money
00:04 in the US for something which is such a political hot potato there. And that's before even China
00:10 gets involved with a potential, if there is a buyer, ban on the sale because TikTok, to their
00:18 eyes, contains technology that they would put under an export ban. So what's left as a choice?
00:25 Well, the courts. And that's absolutely what Beijing is throwing its weight behind. We've
00:30 seen that with Blinken's latest visit. They'll be talking about this as a part of a number of things
00:36 behind the scenes. Now, why is Beijing really against this decision by the United States?
00:44 It depends who you ask. If you go to China, TikTok is seen as a beacon of Chinese technological
00:50 prowess around the world. Of course, if you ask any US lawmaker, the vast majority are going to
00:56 tell you, well, China wants TikTok to remain in the US because it uses it for espionage and for
01:02 propaganda. Now, the public hasn't seen masses of evidence for this, but we do know that TikTok,
01:09 whose parent company is ByteDance and is operated in China, is subject to Chinese laws stipulating
01:17 that its data may be used for national security purposes by the authorities should they choose to.
01:23 So in any case, no other Chinese export, to my eyes, has as much exposure to so many young people
01:30 in the West using it every day. And even if it's not of great strategic value today,
01:35 it might be in the future were a conflict between the US and China to appear.
01:40 And there's been a precedent to this as well, hasn't there? The Chinese owners of dating app
01:46 Grindr were forced to sell as well. What's different this time?
01:49 Yeah, so that was a much smaller fry, if you like. That was in 2020, and Beijing Kunlun Tech
01:56 sold Grindr upon a request by the US government. But of course, Grindr doesn't have anything like
02:01 the number of users TikTok does. It was sold for about $600 million, which if you look at TikTok,
02:07 TikTok, people estimate is worth perhaps more than $100 billion. And the complaints are different.
02:14 So Grindr collects highly personal data, including, for instance, the HIV status of its users. And
02:21 the US government didn't want the Chinese government to be potentially blackmailing US
02:26 citizens using this data. So in the midst of a trade war with Washington at the time,
02:31 was Beijing going to throw its full weight behind what remains a fairly niche dating app? No.
02:36 And India banned TikTok in 2020, didn't it, after clashes on its border.
02:42 What happened after the ban? Yeah, so TikTok plus, I think now we're up to more than 500
02:46 Chinese apps that have been banned in India. As you say, in 2020, there were clashes on the
02:51 India-Chinese border and about 20 Indian soldiers died, four Chinese soldiers died. This ban came
02:58 into effect, which immediately worried many of the 200 million active TikTok users in India,
03:06 because many of them used it for their livelihoods. They had small businesses,
03:08 they'd be influencers, they'd be selling things. Let's not forget that TikTok is essentially
03:12 an e-commerce platform before anything else these days. So there was that worry initially,
03:18 but after a few months, we had the launch of YouTube Shorts, we had the launch of Instagram
03:23 Reels, and they've managed to consolidate a lot of, basically all of the market share that TikTok
03:29 left behind. So if TikTok does leave the US, we'll probably see a similar movement over there.
03:36 And lastly, the European Union also targeted TikTok this week. Tell us a bit about that.
03:40 Yeah, so that's part of their push to protect children from addictive and harmful content.
03:44 We're not yet seeing any big moves on the national security front
03:48 beyond banning it on official phones in the EU.