The hottest TikTok trend these days? Challenging federal attempts to shut down operations.
What happened: TikTok Canada is fighting for its life, filing a motion for a judicial review of a federal order to shutter operations. The Canadian unit, owned by Chinese social media giant ByteDance, claims this would result in hundreds of lost jobs and millions in economic losses.
- The feds published the order last month following a national security review, which would force the company to end operations but still allow the app to run in Canada.
- TikTok Canada argues there are better ways to resolve potential security issues, and said that the reasons for the order were “unintelligible” and “rife with logical fallacies.”
Why it matters: The government has legitimate concerns about TikTok Canada’s security risks given Chinese laws that compel businesses to help gather intelligence for the state. However, dissolving the unit entirely might not be the best solution for regulating TikTok.
Big picture: Canada’s privacy commissioner called the ban into question earlier this week in front of a House of Commons committee, saying that if a company doesn’t have Canadian offices then it becomes much harder to force it to co-operate in investigations.—QH