Around nine months before the US elections, President Joe Biden made his debut on Tiktok. Biden’s campaign team released a 26-second video on Sunday on the online platform, which is particularly popular with young people. In it, the 81-year-old president speaks in a relaxed tone about the US election campaign and the Super Bowl, the final game of the US football league NFL, which took place on Sunday.
Among other things, Biden is asked in the video whether he would prefer to watch the game itself or the show during its halftime break. His answer: He prefers to watch the game. This year’s halftime show featured R&B star Usher.
At the end of the video, Biden is asked – which seems rather superfluous – who he prefers as future president: himself or the opposition Republicans’ favorite for the presidential candidacy, former President Donald Trump. “Are you kidding?” replies a laughing Biden. And then adds: “Biden.”
The video platform Tiktok, which is owned by the Chinese company Bytedance, has been repeatedly criticized by governments in the USA – both that of Biden and that of his predecessor Trump. Bytedance is suspected of giving the Chinese Communist Party access to user data. However, the government in Beijing denies that it is pressuring Chinese companies to hand over personal user data collected abroad.
The US federal authorities have banned the Tiktok app from company cell phones because of data protection concerns. The regional government in the US state of Montana also decided to ban Tiktok last year. However, this move was blocked by a judge.
However, Biden apparently sees Tiktok as an important tool for reaching young voters before the presidential election on November 5th. The platform has long since overtaken other large networks such as YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook in terms of usage times. Tiktok has more than a billion users worldwide.