Despite bans, TikTok partnerships plentiful in Canada
Global News
TikTok experienced the fastest rate of growth among top social media apps used by Canadians, nearly tripling its reach from 10 per cent in 2019.
In the halls of Parliament, TikTok is banned from civil servants’ phones as the government grapples with allegations of foreign interference. But on Canada’s red carpets and in sports arenas, the popular social media platform is still welcome.
The video-sharing app has served as the official voting platform for the Juno Awards’ fan choice award, livestreamed the Osheaga music festival in Montreal and even emblazoned its logo across the helmets of Toronto Maple Leaf players for the last two seasons.
It’s in the spotlight right now as a media partner of the Toronto International Film Festival. Last year, TikTok set up a recording booth along the event’s main strip last year and had influencers host red carpets for the premieres of “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” “The Woman King” and “Bros.”
But this year’s iteration of TIFF will be unlike the last because Canada finds itself in a very different political climate, where TikTok is being treated with caution and in February was booted from federal devices. It’s also been the topic of an ongoing investigation from Canada’s privacy commissioner and three provincial counterparts looking into whether the app complies with the country’s privacy legislation.
The moves stemmed from concerns that data the app owned by Beijing-based ByteDance collects on users could end up in the hands of the Chinese government, or that the platform could be used to push misinformation on users to influence the public in pro-China ways.
TikTok declined to comment for this story, but chief operating officer Vanessa Pappas has previously insisted China has never requested data from the company and it won’t comply if such an order is made.
Experts say the reasons for TikTok’s Canadian partnerships in entertainment and sports are likely twofold: they offer a chance to placate worries by showing big brands are still comfortable being associated with the app, but also a means of boosting the app’s userbase and coolness.
“It’s a hearts and minds campaign,” said Richard Lachman, a digital media professor at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU).
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