French Senate questions TikTok representatives
As the French Senate convened on Thursday, June 8th to interrogate two representatives of TikTok France, a palpable sense of anticipation and anxiety descended upon the venerable legislative chamber. The Committee of Inquiry was launched in March with the task of investigating the reasons behind the app’s rapid prevalence in French culture, as well as its prolific data harvesting and insidious campaigns of influence.
As an unsettling statistic revealed that minors on average spend 107 minutes a day using TikTok, concerns over how user data is exploited have grown globally, leading many countries in North America and Europe to prohibit any usage of the app by civil servants on work devices. Ultimately, the objective of this investigation is to reach a conclusion in September 2023 and provide comprehensive guidance on effectively regulating the activities of TikTok. Yet, as the prominent duo of executives repeatedly failed to provide satisfactory responses to the senators’ queries, suspicions of misrepresentation and dishonesty were reluctantly drawn.
Source: TikTok enquiry: French executives ‘do not know what to say’ – EURACTIV.com
