Senate: the commission of inquiry on TikTok could deliver its conclusions before the summer

The conference of Senate presidents on Wednesday, February 8, acted on the request for the creation of a commission of inquiry on “the use of the social network TikTok, its exploitation of data, its strategy of influence.” The creation of this commission responded to a request from the groupLes Indépendants – République et Territoires, chaired by Senator Claude Malhuret (Satellifacts, February 3).

The appointment of the 19 members of the commission, from different political groups, will take place on Wednesday 1 March. The commission has a maximum of 6 months to carry out its work, but Claude Malhuret hopes that it will be able to deliver its conclusions “before the summer holidays.”

The commission will “try to reveal a certain number of gray areas” on this Chinese platform which is very popular among young people and which has “much greater opacity” than that of other networks, said Claude Malhuret on Thursday, February 9. With TikTok, “we are in gray areas, in particular because the other networks evolve within the framework of a democracy […], while TikTok evolves within the framework of a dictatorship,” he insisted, adding that “Chinese law obliges any company to cooperate with the intelligence services.”

The senator is "under no illusions" about the ability of the commission of inquiry to obtain all the algorithms used by the network, but underlines that it has very extensive powers, at least within French borders, in particular to interview people under oath or carry out “documentary” checks. "We can put a foot in the door," he hopes, recalling that the Chinese network has "a social reason in France."