The United States considers TikTok a threat to its security and is willing to treat it as such.
This issue has ceased to be mere speculation when the House of Representatives – with a rare bipartite consensus in these times of extreme pre-electoral polarization (352 votes in favor and 65 against) – approved last week a law that requires Bytedance, the Chinese company that owns the social network, to sell it within six months.
If it does not do so, TikTok will be banned in the United States. The law now begins its processing in the Senate, where the schedule is uncertain, but the president, Joe Biden, has indicated that he will not veto it.
There is currently no clear buyer for the platform, whose gigantic value has yet to be calculated, so the threat of a ban is very real.
In just seven years, TikTok has grown exponentially to reach one billion users worldwide, 170 million in the United States.
The difference with the other internet giants is that it is not American.
The aggressive protectionist movement comes after years of warnings in Washington about the connections between Bytedance and the Beijing government.
The Chinese parent company has the presence of the Executive in its structure and, by law, operates under the principles of the regime.
The suspicion that the control data of half of the US population (names, telephone numbers, location, cards and all kinds of personal preferences) are accessible to a foreign power has grown in parallel with TikTok's penetration into the market. .
It is also especially popular among young people and its very powerful recommendation algorithm—the average user spends an hour and a half a day watching videos—can also be a misinformation highway.
The context of the electoral campaign ahead of the November presidential elections is another component of the alarm.
Donald Trump tried as president to promote by decree a rule like the one recently approved and was stopped by the courts.
Now, aware that controversy can be a hotbed among the young vote, he questions the ban by law.
TikTok is based in California and has always denied the accusation of subservience to Beijing.
But hundreds of millions spent on lobbying in Washington have failed.
In recent weeks it has been inclined to ask its users to directly challenge congressmen to oppose the measure.
The step taken by the United States has a precedent in India, which in 2020 banned TikTok overnight for its 200 million users, also invoking national security reasons.
The European Commission opened an investigation into the company, but in this case for issues of advertising management and protection of minors.
The argument of strategic security, however, challenges all Western democracies.
Europe is no stranger to the global rivalry between the US and China, even less so since the outbreak of the Ukrainian war.
It would be advisable for the European institutions to prepare without prejudice for a debate on the relationship between freedom and security that, sooner rather than later, could end up reaching Brussels.