In 2022, TikTok was trafficked more than Google and its videos were watched longer than those on YouTube. However, the popular platform may soon be banned in the United States. The boss of the Chinese company had to answer this week, before the American Congress, of the links of his company with Beijing and the fears arising from the use of the data of its users.
TikTok is a “weapon of mass distraction” that raises fears of propaganda and Chinese government interference in the privacy of its users, believes Philippe Gendreau, author of the essay GAFAM – The five-headed monsterwhich has just been published in the new Radar collection of Écosociété editions, aimed at teenagers.
“TikTok has grown tremendously in a short period of time and certainly poses threats,” the 53-year-old teacher, who has been teaching a media literacy class at Ozias-Leduc secondary school for 19 years, told me. in Mont-Saint-Hilaire.
His timely book is a concise and highly relevant overview of the GAFAM phenomenon, explained to young people aged 15 to 19. It is a popular work that is not at all infantilizing, despite the sparing use of the “you” (the only indication that the essay is aimed at adolescents, even if it is just as interesting for their parents or Grand parents).
Philippe Gendreau offers an overview of the giants of the web (in particular Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft), from their origins to their sprawling spheres of influence, inviting the reader to take a critical look at these conglomerates which “get their power from your personal data […] to make money with what you hold most precious: your private life”.
Describing himself as a technophile, perfectly aware that the web giants are now unavoidable, the author is careful not to lecture. Rather, it explains, with a very simple analogy, the unfortunate consequences of years of complacency by States towards GAFAM. “It’s like letting strangers into our house without an invitation,” he wrote. In effect.
The GAFAMs, he writes, are “sellers of human livestock” who operate without our informed consent, even if we are aware that these companies take advantage of our attention to garner advertising revenue (Facebook derives 97.5% of his income).
“What my students tell me is that they know that their data is compiled in real time,” Philippe Gendreau tells me. But they don’t know how much these are minted and traded on a market by data brokers. I show them what this data is for and what it could be used for. We see it right now with TikTok. Current events have demonstrated that there really could be a foreign influence on politics. »
The agents of surveillance capitalism represent a serious threat to democracy, the author reminds us in his essay, giving the examples of the Brexit vote, the 2016 American presidential election and the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Philippe Gendreau is also worried about seeing the GAFAM acting as censorship agents who determine what is acceptable and unacceptable, in particular between the photo of a female breast and that of a male breast on Facebook.
Without demonizing the GAFAMs, it highlights the deleterious effects on the environment of the planned obsolescence of Apple products, the impact of Amazon on small local businesses or the deplorable working conditions of employees – sometimes children – in cobalt mines or Chinese factories.
If he wishes to make young people aware of the intrusion of GAFAM into their private lives, it is to politicians that his complaints are addressed. “Young people are full citizens, but elected officials have the political power to try to change something,” he says. Unfortunately, this is not an election issue. There is a responsibility of the State which is not assumed. »
While he agrees it’s a David versus Goliath fight, Philippe Gendreau believes things are about to change. “I am an idealist, otherwise I wouldn’t have been teaching for 27 years! he said. I like to think that the web giants are going to have to change their ways and that there will be superior protection mechanisms. »
How to tame monsters? With antitrust laws and laws which oblige, as in Australia, the GAFAM to share their income with the media of which they exploit to great profit the contents which they parasitize. Advances in Europe and soon in Canada, thanks to Bills C-18 (sharing revenues with the media) and C-11 (promoting Canadian content), fuel his optimism, he says, despite all the efforts made by web giants to dissuade legislators and ensure that new legislative frameworks are the least restrictive possible.
What he wishes to nurture more than anything with this work of media and digital literacy, essential in this era of fake news and hyper-rigged videos (deep fakes), it is the critical spirit of young people. “I like to think they’re going to be critical even of what they read in my book! “Words of a fine pedagogue.