tick tock. As of Monday, March 13, the Senate commission of inquiry into TikTok has begun. The goal is to understand how the application works, where its data goes and what influence strategy it follows. A bureau of a dozen senators was formed to carry out this work. Mickaël Vallet, Socialist Senator from Charente-Maritime, will chair the discussions. He will be accompanied by Claude Malhuret, Senator from Allier, as rapporteur. They are surrounded by a dozen vice presidents who are present during exchanges with the specialists.

“Current events in the United States, Canada and Europe support our initiative in the Senate. We cannot say that TikTok is not a potential tool of disinformation or manipulation in favor of undemocratic regimes, nor that its use is safe in terms of the necessary data protection. “The commission of inquiry will examine these issues comprehensively and make recommendations,” continues Claude Malhuret Senate website.

The hearings of the commission of inquiry are broadcast live and can be replayed on YouTube. We’ve taken the time to watch them in full to give you a summary of what’s been said. On Thursday, May 4th, it was Bernard Benhamou’s turn, Secretary General of the Institute of Economic Sovereignty, to speak about the application of ByteDance.

Data on TikTok, a tool in China’s strategy

Bernard Benhamou focused primarily on the data collected and what it means for a government like China’s. “Not considering it neutral to perceive so much data, including biometric data and emotional data,” is a mistake. “Both fingerprint and faceprint can be captured […] and we can clearly see that this can have significant implications for behavior analysis,” he continues. Gathering so much data on European user behavior is part of a real strategy for China, the expert said.

“It’s a strategic element in the truest sense of the word, including political control of population groups, because when you know several dozen parameters per person, these are not yesterday’s questionnaires.” we can apply to a person. By definition, their non-use would constitute a form of professional misconduct on the part of the Chinese services. In other words, it means that the application can perfectly recognize a user just by analyzing how they behave in the application. For example, the team has access to his preferences, his emotions, his behavior towards others, his political ideas or even his work and the city in which he lives.

By collecting so much data, one of the goals is to become the best in the field of artificial intelligence. By gathering so much information about Europeans, China could be working on new, ever more efficient tools. “Artificial intelligence feeds on data. For the development of alternative solutions, it was particularly important to have the structured data of hundreds of thousands or even millions of companies. And what could be more interesting for a Chinese company than extracting data on all citizens of the planet, especially in developed countries, but not only,” he explains.

A “Technological Cold War”

For Bernard Benhamou, we are currently at the beginning of a technological cold war. “In the face of what could be called the beginning of a Sino-US technological cold war, with consequences that we must assess over time,” he specifies. The US government has been considering a possible ban on its use on American soil for several years. Montana is the first state to vote for a ban. It is scheduled to come into force in early 2024. Should France do the same? According to Bernard Benhamou, the most important thing today is to think about tools that could compete with Chinese or American applications to avoid becoming addicted.

“In general, we underestimated the usefulness of this data for tracking individuals and populations. And I make it clear that authoritarian regimes have a constant obsession with controlling their people. […] We have to ask ourselves whether data mining should continue and whether these models have become so toxic that they should be questioned. […] “The confrontation that must move us in Europe in the coming times will be a confrontation between different types of values, but also different types of economic data,” he admits.