TikTok’s Future in Canada Looks Red, White, and Blue ⇥ bnnbloomberg.ca

Ritika Dubey, Canadian Press:

A cybersecurity expert says Canadian TikTok users likely won’t notice any changes to the social media app as major American investors sign a deal to form a new TikTok joint venture.

“This deal happens to be based on U.S. law only and it’s really not that impactful for Canadians on a day-to-day basis,” said Robert Falzon, head of engineering at cybersecurity firm Check Point Software Technologies Ltd.

Canadians will continue to use the international version of the app that’s owned and influenced by Chinese owner ByteDance Ltd., he said.

There is a kind of implied for now which should be tacked onto the end of its impact on Canadians. This U.S.-specific version lays the groundwork for a political wedge issue in Canada and elsewhere: should people use the version of the app run by a company headquartered in Beijing and mostly owned by a mix of American, Chinese, and Emirati investors, or should they use the app run by a company based in the U.S and mostly owned by a mix of American, Chinese, and Emirati investors? Or, to frame it in more politically expedient terms, should people be allowed to use the “Chinese” app or should they be pushed into the “American” app? Under that framing, I would not be surprised to see the U.S. version become the dominant client for TikTok worldwide.

Our government under the previous prime minister forcibly closed domestic TikTok operations on national security grounds, though it did not ban the app. Perhaps that would have been too much, too soon. Now, though, politicians do not need to endure voters’ wrath if they banned a popular social platform, since there is another version with less scaremongering attached to it.