Double standards in the regulation of social media in the United States?

While the Chinese application TikTok seems to be getting closer and closer to an imminent ban in the United States scheduled for January 19, experts point out the double standard in the management of social networks among our neighbors to the South.

One thing is certain, the re-election of Donald Trump in the United States seems to bring a wave of significant changes to the social media landscape south of the border.

Downloading TikTok could become impossible in the United States as of January 19. The future of the application, whose reputation is well established among young people, is in the hands of its Chinese parent company. ByteDance.

The US Congress passed a law last March for ByteDance to sell TikTok and cut ties with its popular application, considering it a threat to national security. Congress argues that users’ personal data risks being transmitted to the Chinese government, believing that Beijing could use the social network for propaganda or disinformation purposes.

This is because Chinese law can force companies to share collected information such as the geolocation and IP address of its users.

The judges of the Supreme Court of the United States therefore looked into the possible ban on TikTok on Friday, although for the moment, everything indicates that it will be maintained despite President-elect Donald Trump’s request, at the end of December, to suspend its threat of banning the country. Against all odds, he has come to the app’s defense in recent months, somewhat contradicting his mantra Make America Great Again (Make America Great Again).

If he cannot overturn the decision of Congress, he could convince elected officials to do so or even suspend its entry into force. This would still plunge the future of the application into uncertainty, since the ban could be reinstated at any time if the president so desires.

To defend yourself, ByteDance discusses freedom of speech while arguing the First Amendment. The company has also already indicated that Beijing would not allow the sale of the application.

We do not close a platform of expression because we fear that the comments expressed are dangerousreplied the former Solicitor General of the United States, Noel Francisco, today the lawyer of the Chinese company whose projected turnover for 2025 should reach 10 billion US dollars, according to data from Statista.

TikTok maintains that there is no evidence that the company provided data to the Chinese government and adds that there are ways to make this impossible, for example, by outsourcing data management to a company with secure servers.

ByteDance therefore probably has until January 19 to sell the platform which, in the United States alone, has 170 million users.

Even if the American law moves forward, users who already have the application on their cell phone will be able to continue using it, but will no longer be able to make updates, which will make the application obsolete in the near future.

The most skilled will nevertheless always have the possibility of connecting to a VPN to pretend to access it from another country.

Freedom of expression with variable geometry

Several other companies, such as online commerce giants Temu and Amazon, however, have links to China and are tolerated in the United States.

If the US Congress reverses its decision on the future of TikTok, this would show that there is freedom of expression with variable geometry depending on where the platform comes fromdeplores the specialist in fact-checking and media education, Laurent Bigot, in an interview on Saturday on the show Les faits d’abord, hosted by Alain Gravel.

That [ces chefs d’entreprises] What they are asking for when they talk about freedom of expression is the absence of regulation. They advocate the impossibility of limiting anything, including the most vehement comments that animate these networks in order to ensure that it generates income.

Whether we’re talking about TikTok or Facebook – which this week ended fact-checking on its platform in the United States by independent organizations – these are [entités] who are there to do business whatever the cost for our democraciesadds the expert.

For Mark Zuckerberg, ending his fact-checking program is a way to counteract censorship on social networks, the specialist believes.

For him, as soon as there is a form of rule, there is censorship, indicates Mr. Bigot, while Meta himself establishes rules when he wishes to limit the work of verifying the facts.

Zuckerberg never wanted, for example, that fact-checking (which was otherwise very summary and carried out by third parties such as the media) could be applied to the political field. It is a rule that he has never hesitated to put in place, puts forward Mr. Bigot.

For the professor at the Center for Research in Public Law at the University of Montreal, Pierre Trudel, Mark Zuckerberg’s recent announcement is none other than a sort of adjustment on the part of Meta to the strong trend embodied by the re-election of Donald Trump towards a much more libertarian conception of freedom of expression and less concerned with ensuring balance.

The news is intended to be worrying in the eyes of the professor, who has the impression that it could have the effect ofaccentuate the absence of reliable information on social networks. These are platforms where we multiply the mechanisms to generate clicks and traffic. The social media business model consists of transforming the attention of Internet users in such a way as to maximize everything in advertising dollars. It is not a model that values ​​the verification of information established in a rigorous manner.

According to the professor, this recent decision by Meta can have serious consequences on the way we obtain information and consequently on democracy since Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are the main public spaces for exchange.

A blatant delay in regulation on the part of States

States have been very late in establishing a certain balance in what is currently governed by the raw market. The democratic imperatives associated with verifying facts, with the rigor of information, with marking the difference between a fad and a verifiable fact are falling by the wayside for lack of requirements and obligations, believes Mr. Trudel.

States currently require very few platforms, whether TikTok or Facebook, to do their job in this sense. In America, as in Europe, they actually intervene very little to make these platforms accountable and transparent with regard to their algorithms.

Mr. Bigot believes, however, that States do indeed have the means to regulate these communication behemoths whose owners seem to be getting closer and closer to political leaders.

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Mark Zuckerberg, like several of his compatriots and competitors, has increased his advances towards Donald Trump since this summer, and especially since his re-election.

The boss of Meta notably dined in November with Mr. Trump at his residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, in a gesture seen as a desire to calm relations with the future president of the United States.

Another gesture aimed at the Republican camp: Meta appointed a loyalist of Mr. Trump, Joel Kaplan, at the head of his public affairs, replacing the former British deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, who resigned.

We will suffer the upheavals of Trump, the reversals of Zuckerberg and other business leaders who essentially seek to ensure the protection of their interests.

The fact-checking specialist notes that it all starts from a misunderstanding with these platforms. They are not considered as publishers, but only as distribution toolshe explains. Thus, they do not fall under the scope of a certain number of laws or rules that apply to any other type of publisher.

Pierre Trudel believes that this is the price to pay on the part of States for having delayed in acting in a concerted manner in order to respond to pressure from digital platforms.

If Australia, Europe and Canada worked more together, it could perhaps help to rebalance this bulldozer which is eating away at our right to be informed.

This reversal on fact-checking has caused a wave of concern in many countries, from Europe to Australia to Brazil, toHIM and the Council of Europe.

The international fact-checking network IFCN even called the justification argument made by Mark Zuckerberg that fact-checking was politically oriented and led too much censorshipas false.

If Meta generalized its decision to the whole world, which for the moment only concerns the United States, it would have dramatic consequences.warned the network which brings together more than 130 organizations, including Agence France-Presse.

The High Commissioner of theHIM for human rights, Volker Türk, also affirmed on Friday that regulating hateful content online was not censorship.

Mark Zuckerberg justified his decision on Tuesday by his concern for restore free expression [ses] platformsas Donald Trump’s return to the White House on January 20 approaches, who has harshly criticized Facebook for several years.

All things considered, critics agree that what goes by the wayside in this type of situation is the public’s right to quality information.

With information from Aimée Lemieux and Agence France-Presse