Keystone-SDA
TikTok has more than a billion users worldwide, but is accumulating setbacks: banned in Albania, the application is threatened with ban in the United States and is the subject of an investigation by the Union European Union after suspicions of interference in Romania.
This content was published on
January 10, 2025 – 12:41
In the hot seat in the United States
(Keystone-ATS) In the United States, a law passed in April requires ByteDance, the Chinese group that owns TikTok, to sell the application by January 19, failing which the platform will be banned in the country.
The social network is accused of allowing Chinese authorities to improperly collect data on the approximately 170 million American users claimed by the platform.
Seized by TikTok, the American Supreme Court examines the constitutionality of this law on Friday but has, for the moment, refused to suspend its entry into force.
To preserve their data, the American federal government, the European Commission as well as the British Parliament and government had already banned the downloading and use of TikTok on their employees’ professional devices in 2023.
Suspension in Albania
In Albania, TikTok must close for at least a year from the beginning of 2025, at an as yet unknown date. Announcing the suspension at the end of 2024, Prime Minister Edi Rama called the app a “neighborhood thug.”
The decision came less than a month after a 14-year-old student was killed and another injured in a brawl near a school in the capital Tirana, which occurred after a conflict on social media.
Influence campaign in Romania
In mid-December 2024, the European Commission announced the opening of an investigation into TikTok’s recommendation systems, suspected of having been used for “coordinated manipulation” of the presidential election in Romania a month earlier.
Far-right candidate Calin Georgescu, who came to everyone’s surprise at the top of the first round, was accused by the Romanian authorities of having benefited from an illicit support campaign orchestrated by Moscow, particularly on TikTok.
Due to suspicion, the presidential election was canceled by the Constitutional Court in early December, two days before the second round.
-Danger for teenagers?
The social network is particularly popular with young people, attracted by its ultra-short video formats which scroll continuously.
But this dazzling success comes with criticism.
TikTok is thus regularly accused of confining its users to content silos, via an opaque algorithm, and of promoting the dissemination of disinformation and illegal, violent or obscene content, particularly among young people.
In Australia, Parliament passed a law at the end of November banning access to social networks for those under 16, one of the strictest measures in the world in this area.
In France, a group of seven families took TikTok to court, accusing the social network of having exposed their children to content that could push them to suicide.
At the end of December, Venezuela fined TikTok ten million dollars for its “negligence” after the death of three teenagers who took on a dangerous challenge relayed on the platform.
The social network also had to abandon a program this year, in its TikTok Lite application, which rewarded users for the time spent in front of screens, after a launch tinged with controversy in France and Spain and the opening of an investigation by Brussels which pointed to “serious risks for the mental health of users”.
Threat to public order?
TikTok has been banned several times, permanently or temporarily, during violent events.
The application was temporarily suspended by the French government in New Caledonia in May, during deadly riots against an electoral reform project.
In Nepal, TikTok, accused of disrupting “social harmony”, was banned between November 2023 and August 2024.
The social network has been banned since 2020 in India, after deadly clashes on the border with China.
Agence France-Presse (AFP), among more than fifteen information certification organizations, is paid by TikTok in several countries to verify videos that potentially contain false information.
