Canada's TikTok crackdown is just one more threat to students' access to information
Canada's TikTok crackdown is a product of a politically biased double standard and ignores a larger X-shaped threat
On the Nov. 6, 2024, the Government of Canada ordered TikTok to wind-down its operations in Canada. François-Philippe Champagne, minister of innovation, science and industry, explained in a statement that the decision was based on the findings of a national security inquiry into the app and business.
While the order does not limit Canadians' ability to watch or post videos on TikTok, students should be alert to this potential threat to their access to information.
Canadian creators interviewed by CBC Radio-Canada, as well as Toronto Metropolitan University expert, Phillip Mai, are all concerned about the potential of a future TikTok ban.
Mai explicitly explicitly drew the connection between TikTok and young people, suggesting that the Canadian government might slowly be working its way towards a complete ban, but is holding off for fear of a backlash from young people so close to an election.
Young people would be right to be upset if the government took such drastic actions. The government’s cited concern over national security, as well as stakeholder’s concerns over the ability of TikTok to control the information environment it enables, are in many cases nothing but very thinly-veiled anti-Chinese prejudice.
Expert's national security fears centre on TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, being forced to surrender user data to the Chinese government. Similar sets of Canadian’s personal data are collected by Meta, X (formerly Twitter) and other websites, all with the intent to sell well-targeted ads to advertisers.
Why is it so much more controversial for TikTok to generate a data profile to sell people things than it is for Instagram? All of this information is vulnerable to various forms of nefarious access, so a singular focus on TikTok is politically biased.
Since Elon Musk took over the platform [X, formerly Twitter], he has used it as a personal political weapon; most evidently during the recent US presidential campaign, where algorithmic changes after his Trump endorsement helped to boost right-wing users and posts disproportionately.
X — formerly known as Twitter — represents a much more pressing risk for political interference. Since Elon Musk took over the platform, he has used it as a personal political weapon; most evidently during the recent US presidential campaign, where algorithmic changes after his Trump endorsement helped to boost right-wing users and posts disproportionately.
This is compounded by intentional algorithmic manipulation that promotes Musk’s own tweets to nearly all X users. He used this self-promotion to destructive effect when, in August, he promoted and endorsed then ongoing violent xenophobic riots in the United Kingdom. His tweets were seen by thousands, and amplified the social media firestorm that continued to fuel the riots for a week.
Canadian youth are the most likely age demographic to consume news on TikTok, as well as on social media at large. Because of this, students are particularly vulnerable to the rapid changes in the social media landscape.
Our information feeds are not apolitical, as demonstrated by X and by recent attempts in the US to ban TikTok. Multiple Republican lawmakers close to the project of the still pending ban repeatedly stated that the presence of pro-Palestinian content on TikTok was among their reasons for wanting the app banned, particularly for it’s potential effects on young people’s media habits.
Our information feeds are not apolitical, as demonstrated by X (formerly Twitter) and by recent attempts in the US to ban TikTok.
Every platform has it's own political and economic concerns that get in the way of their being a neutral source of information. From platforms like X disproportionately promoting right-wing content, to Meta’s ban on Canadian news, or the TikTok-speak developed by creators to avoid nebulous censorship - none of these platforms are perfect and none of them should be completely trusted to inform us.
While student's should be concerned about the government's worrying crackdown on TikTok, we can't be uncritical about the platform, or any platform. While social media remains an important tool for us in consuming news and information, we have to approach this consumption critically and recognize how each platform impacts our understanding of the world.
