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The Chinese short video platform Tiktok has 800 million active users worldwide. More recently, it appeared that Tiktok would be banned in the US President Donald Trump had put the Chinese company under pressure and threatened to ban it from the US market. Now an agreement has been reached so that this does not happen. Tech expert Hannes Grassegger fixes the deal.
Hannes grassegger
Journalist
SRF News: Has President Donald Trump succeeded in a coup?
Hannes Grassegger: It is definitely a victory for Trump. On the one hand, at the foreign policy level, it is an announcement to China that it will set the tone. And at the national level, it’s a very smart move in competition policy. It is also an advertisement for Silicon Valley. With the Tiktok deal, create a competitor for Facebook. And that competitor is in the hands of Trump’s friends. At the same time, a potential competitor for Amazon could emerge here.
It is also an advertisement for Silicon Valley.
What was it that prompted Tiktok to make these concessions?
In this case, Donald Trump really had everyone behind him: America seemed united. Tiktok had no choice but to give in. The President of the USA and the USA have the ability to prohibit and allow things in their own home. If Congress appears to be playing games, then nothing stands in Trump’s way.
Tiktok was Chinese. What does this agreement mean for China?
For one thing, it’s a clear setback. On the other hand, they have not approved the algorithm, that is, the core and the heart of the application. The new US co-owner, Oracle, has only been granted the rights to monitor data flows. I still don’t know what that looks like in detail. But that doesn’t mean that the algorithm, Tiktok’s Coca-Cola formula, is now in the hands of Americans.
Perhaps it is also an optimistic and hopeful sign for a future in this digital cold war.
Isn’t the company useless if the algorithm stays in China?
The company remains valuable as long as it remains in operation. What is really interesting about this agreement is that pragmatism. Because China has not been crushed. China has refused, even with its own legislation, to publish the algorithm. And now she has found a way to deal with it. A hybrid form of control was developed. So the US can see the data streams without having the algorithm in their hands. And this pragmatism could point the way. Perhaps it is also an optimistic and hopeful sign for a future in this digital cold war.
Interview conducted by Nicoletta Cimmino.
