The US House of Representatives is due to vote on a bill giving Chinese owner ByteDance about six months to sell that part of its business
China could use social media app TikTok to influence the 2024 US elections, the director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, has told a House of Representatives intelligence committee hearing.
Asked by Democratic Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi if China’s ruling Communist party (CCP) would use TikTok to influence the elections, Haines said “we cannot rule out that the CCP would use it”.
Lawmakers have long voiced concerns that the Chinese government could access user data or influence what people see on the app, including pushing content to stoke US political divisions.
I can only think that TikTok’s status as a state-affiliated company might have something to do with it being singled out.
In practice, however, other social media platforms are controlled by capital and state actors have a lot of capital to leverage, so there’s effectively no difference other than China can do for free via TikTok what Russia and the US have to pay for on any other social media platform.