Access to Information and Minister for Data Protection Jean-François Roberge launched on the social network TikTok on the same day that the head of the Canadian Center for Cybersecurity, Sami Khoury, warned the public of the risk posed by the applicationthat would send its users’ data to China.

A choice that Laurence Grondin-Robillard, expert in communications and digital media at UQAM, considers “pretty dubious”. Although it is a solution that “seems effective” to reach young people, she believes that, given that TikTok is the only social network that has not slowed down after the health measures were lifted has, would have been more effective to go to campus to reach young people.

Aside from cybersecurity issues that have prompted the US government to ban some federal employees from using the app on their phones, TikTok generally doesn’t promote political content. The algorithm is primarily for entertainment and does not provide any political content unless it has detected a strong user interest in these videos.

This reality applies all the more, explains the expert, since the “shadow ban” on videos of protest movements in Hong Kong. Several videos were removed without notice from the platform, which defends that the application is for entertainment and that content that is too political is inappropriate.

Therefore, in order to make themselves known on the platform, politicians have to surf trends with less serious content. Something, that all party leaders have done it, and Québec Solidaire understood that in the last elections, explains Mrs. Grondin-Robillard. Minister Roberge, who has promised to make a lot of dubious content on the platform, also seems to have this idea.

“It’s about putting small gags and topics that deserve to be deepened on the same level,” comments the expert. She is particularly critical Election campaign in Quebec there, in which we saw people putting poutine or corn in a ballot box, for example. “That really takes the feathers out of the institution of politics, it lacks seriousness.”