With all eyes on how a new Trump administration in the U.S. will interface with China Tech in the years ahead, its neighbor to the north has levelled a blow to one of the biggest apps to come out of the country.
Canada has ordered the closure of ByteDance’s operations in Canada — specifically the offices of TikTok Technology Canada, Inc. — citing national security risks. Those risks do not extend to the app itself: consumers can still download, use and create content for TikTok, and businesses can still advertise on it. “The decision to use a social media application or platform is a personal choice,” said François-Philippe Champagne, the country’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, in a statement.
The statement did not specify more about the security risks. But the company has been under scrutiny for years over how it handles user data on the platform. Critics allege variously that user data is harvested by China and in ways that cannot be fully audited. TikTok has repeatedly denied that this is the case.
The closure impacts “hundreds” of jobs in Canada, TikTok said in a statement to TechCrunch. It plans to appeal the decision.
“Shutting down TikTok’s Canadian offices and destroying hundreds of well-paying local jobs is not in anyone’s best interest, and today’s shutdown order will do just that,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “We will challenge this order in court. The TikTok platform will remain available for creators to find an audience, explore new interests and for businesses to thrive.”
The company had been hiring most recently for dozens of roles across operations, engineering and marketing across different locations in the country.
TikTok, by one estimate, has around 15 million users in Canada, working out to a penetration of about 41% of the population. In line with how it’s used elsewhere, among adults, those aged 18-24 are more engaged, according to eMarketer. But that study does not cover children, who as we know also love TikTok. It’s a controversial issue in itself due to concerns over children’s mental health.
Despite its mega popularity, TikTok has been simmering in hot water in Canada for a while now. This latest development is the result of a national security review under the “Investment in Canada” Act. That review was prompted after Canada banned the use of TikTok on all government devices in February 2023. That ban remains intact.
The company’s precarious situation in the country may have also had an impact on how it has developed further services there. TikTok Shop, the company’s in-app e-commerce platform for selling and buying goods, was expected to launch in Canada by the end of 2023, but it has yet to do so. The Creator Rewards Program, for paying creators, also has yet to launch there, too.
Canada is far from the only country making efforts to reign in TikTok.
In addition to problems facing TikTok specifically in other countries, the app is also netted into a wider reassessment of social media in general. Just yesterday, the government in Australia announced a proposal to ban all social media for under-16s.
International government attention around national security and TikTok really got its start during the last Trump administration, when the President laid out a plan to ban the app in the country — where it now has 170 million users — unless its operations there were separated and sold to a U.S. entity. Four years on, that case there is still ongoing, with TikTok appealing a signed order to sell its U.S. app operations by January 2025.
It’s anyone’s guess what will happen next, since Trump, ironically, reversed course over the summer. “I’m for TikTok because you need competition,” he said in July after joining the app himself.