In Canada, TikTok is attempting to get the authorities to reverse the decision to shut down its business operations by going to court – but also by recommending itself as a proven and reliable ally in combating “harmful content” and “misinformation.”
Canada last month moved to shut down TikTok’s operations, without banning the app itself. All this is happening ahead of federal elections amid the government’s efforts to control social media narratives, always citing fears of “misinformation” and “foreign interference” as the reasons.
TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, was accused of – via its parent company – representing “specific national security risks” when the decision regarding its corporate presence was made in November; no details have been made public regarding those alleged risks, however.
Now the TikTok Canada director of public policy and government affairs, Steve de Eyre, is telling the local press that the newly created circumstances are making it difficult for the company to work with election regulators and “civil society” to ensure election integrity – something Eyre said was previously successfully done.
In 2021, he noted, TikTok initiated collaboration with Elections Canada (the agency that organizes elections and has the power to flag social media content) which included TikTok adding links to all election-related videos that directed users toward “verified information.”
And the following year, TikTok was invested in monitoring its platform for “potentially violent” content, during the Freedom Convoy protests against Covid mandates.
More recently, TikTok was also on its toes for “foreign interference and hateful content” related to Brampton clashes between Sikhs and Hindus.
This approach, Eyre argues, is now jeopardized because TikTok employees are not present in Canada, who would be able to inform the platform’s decisions in terms of the political and cultural “context” in Canada.
And the political context is that of the Trudeau government playing the election misinformation card indirectly and directly, to put pressure on social sites.
Even though the decision regarding the company’s business operations has been described by Foreign Minister Melanie Joly as “a message to China” – it’s really a message to TikTok, since the app remains available, but has been “put on notice.”
