TikTok is a peculiar phenomenon for someone born in the 70s. It’s a Chinese app that broadcasts short videos recorded and shared by users featuring cats, dazzling pranks, teenagers dancing to playback, cooking, and opinions. TikTok then customizes these videos for others to watch and vote on. At least, that’s how it appears to a non-user. Faced with this, one feels as obsolete as a Viking with a tablet and Netflix.
It’s not the first time a mature generation has professed incomprehension towards a new phenomenon. It happened with Christianity, waltzing, the first cafes, impressionism, women’s suffrage, jazz, rock’n’roll, interreligious marriages, the bikini, yoga, and video games.
In TikTok, there are also darker forces at play. TikTok is a Chinese tech company with a monopolistic niche power (characteristic of companies with positive network externalities), controlling content that feeds hundreds of millions of people every day, all without anyone knowing exactly how it operates. In the eyes of the U.S., this grants TikTok hard political power: it can, if it wishes, disseminate manipulated videos, downplay news, or amplify content to shape opinions or interfere in elections. It’s not a power exclusive to TikTok, of course. American companies like Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and ChatGPT share genetic lineage and power with TikTok.
Forfeiting European internal and external sovereignty is akin to sharing house keys with a third party.
On April 20th, the U.S. Congress passed a law with overwhelming support from both Republicans and Democrats, requiring TikTok shareholders to sell their shares or cease operations in the U.S. It leaves no other options. This was done to prevent potential Chinese political influence in the U.S. For Congress, it was equivalent to prohibiting the Chinese government from controlling Antena 3 in Spain. The American colossus has flexed its muscles.
It’s said that the U.S. has a lot of artificial intelligence and little regulation, while Europe has a lot of regulation and little artificial intelligence. Now, in the case of TikTok and its counterparts, it can be said that in the U.S., there’s sovereignty in content and regulation, while in Europe, there’s neither regulation nor sovereignty in content.
On that same April 20th, the House of Representatives voted on another significant matter, approving a package of arms, equipment, and ammunition valued at $61 billion for Ukraine. This is four times the annual defense budget of Spain and large enough to save Ukraine from conquest, and thereby Moldova and possibly the Baltic countries and Poland. The U.S. has restored the balance of power in Eastern Europe by simply flipping the switch that had been triggered in Congress a few months ago. The fact that critical Ukrainian military equipment has to come from the U.S. doesn’t speak well of European strategic planning and sovereignty but rather of the economic, military, strategic, and political power of the U.S., a country some describe as decadent and dysfunctional.
Forfeiting European internal and external sovereignty is like sharing house keys with a third party, allowing them to come and go as they please, and it’s a democratic deficit, meaning Europeans aren’t the ones deciding what happens in Europe. Vikings were, among other things, powerful and adept bloodthirsty raiders, but they became obsolete by the 11th century. Let’s not let the same fate befall us. The clock is ticking, and not just for TikTok.
Article written by Marc Murtra and published in La Vanguardia: A Time Bomb for TikTok
