Why is Silicon Valley Big Tech having a panic attack about TikTok?

“The algorithm on TikTok could easily tilt a couple of percentage points in an election here in the USA,” Calacanis said. “Or tilt sentiment toward the Ukraine war, or the independence of Hong Kong and Taiwan.”

He means like Facebook did?

I think there are different angles to this, although these people claim it's a matter of national security, it is clear that for Silicon Valley it's more of a matter of competition; why else is every company trying to replicate TikTok's formula? Of course, it's much easier to justify these oligopolistic desires as a matter of national security; which, btw, I'm not saying is or isn't a concern.

Personally, TikTok has not posed more of a threat than Twitter, Facebook or Whatsapp have. Recently these social media were used to good effect to spread misinformation in the 2022 chilean plebiscite. It is obviously too early to tell what kind of impact these social media had on the elections but one thing is for certain: democracy is being manipulated by bad actors through social media.