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Sunday, February 16, 2025

TikTok. Estonian minister calls for banning the app

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Europe, following the US example, should consider banning TikTok, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said on Sunday. This application was disabled in the United States, but its operation was restored after several hours after Donald Trump's announcement.

– In recent years, we have witnessed the spread of disinformation via TikTok and the use of the platform to manipulate election results, not to mention the serious threat to security due to the collection of huge amounts of data via the Chinese application – he recalled.

He noted that “the most striking example was in Romania, where the results of the first round of the presidential elections were invalidated when it was revealed that Russia had interfered in the elections through a large-scale online campaign.”

A legitimate concern

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– TiTok is not the media, it is a tool of influence – said the Estonian minister, emphasizing that such social media applications do not provide objective information, but enable the dissemination of biased information.

He said because TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, “there is a reasonable fear that the data could end up in the hands of Chinese authorities.” He recalled the recent report of the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service, which stated that the extensive information collected by TikTok could be used for foreign intelligence purposes or even cyber attacks.

In his opinion, Europe should follow the example USAshould consider banning TikTok.

Head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Estonia at the same time, he called for democratic countries to effectively face the sinister attacks of bots based on artificial intelligence, which aim to interfere in state processes.

A few days earlier, the Minister of Education Sweden Johan Pehrson called TikTok “the spy app that enchanted an entire generation.” “If TikTok does not cut ties with China, we will have to ban this application here as well,” Pehrson emphasized.

Read also: Swedish minister: TikTok should also be banned in our country

TikTok banned in the US

On Sunday, access to the TikTok platform was disabled in the US after a law came into force that would end the application's operation under Chinese control. Several hours later, TikTok announced that it was restoring the application in the United States after the announcement Donald Trump.

The president-elect assured that the companies providing the application will not be held responsible for breaking the new law and that on Monday he intends to suspend the operation of the law for 90 days. Trump also announced that he would like to transform TikTok into a joint venture with “50 percent share of the United States”, but did not exclude the possibility of further co-control of the company by the current Chinese owner.

Main photo source: maoyunping/Shutterstock



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