Yeah, there’s some interesting context to this new push from TikTok.
As it continues to battle for its life in the U.S., TikTok has launched a new promotional push in Canada, which aims to highlight how the app is helping Canadian businesses, and the broader community, by facilitating connection and engagement.
TikTok will feature a range of inspirational Canadian creators in a new series of 60-second video clips, which will be shared on the @TikTokCanada account.
And there are some good stories in there, like supporting Indigenous-owned family businesses, helping Canadians monetize their passions, and growing small-scale operations.
These are all valuable contributions, though it does feel like TikTok has left out one big element. Which, of course, is likely the key point.
As TikTok notes:
“TikTok Canada and its hundreds of employees are committed to supporting Canadian creators and small businesses as they build communities and thriving businesses and careers.”
Those would be the same employees that the Canadian government is seeking to evict from the nation entirely, due to national security concerns.
In November last year, the Canadian government issued an order for TikTok to dissolve its Canadian business, citing national security risks. Canadian officials have not sought to ban the app in the region, as the U.S. government has, but they have called for TikTok’s local business to shut down, and move out of the nation.
And much like the U.S. push, the actual reasons for such aren’t entirely clear.
As explained by Canadian Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne:
“The decision we took was to protect the national security of Canada on the basis of the analysis that we conducted with our security services, and we came to the conclusion that these activities that were conducted that were conducted in Canada by TikTok at their offices would be injurious to national security.”
So those hundreds of employees committed to supporting Canadian creators, the Canadian government actually wants gone, for undisclosed reasons.
Which, as noted, would be why TikTok has launched this campaign, in an effort to pressure Canadian officials to drop their push to evict the company from the nation.
TikTok launched a legal challenge against the Canadian Government’s action in December, and it’s still pushing to fight the order.
Maybe, with this campaign, it’s hoping that community support will strengthen its push, though without knowing what the full case is against it, it’s hard to speculate on whether that’ll be effective.
Either way, it’s another battle for TikTok, as it works to maintain its hold in Western nations. And if a solution can’t be found in the U.S., forcing TikTok to be cut off from American users, that could be the beginning of the end of the app, with other nations also considering their position on the company.
So while it’s framed as an inspirational campaign, it’s really a propaganda push from TikTok to combat government regulation.
That approach didn’t sway U.S. senators, but maybe it’ll be more effective with those up north.
