Some politicians in Germany consider the app “a danger to our democracy,” says Roderich Kiesewetter, vice chairman of the Bundestag’s intelligence control committee and member of Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), because it is an “important instrument” in China and Russia’s hybrid warfare.
Jens Zimmerman, a member of Germany’s Social Democratic Party, said that the government should consider at least banning the app on federal devices. This is the case for the EU institutions, for instance.
What’s also very peculiar is that only Chinese employees of Bytedance are permitted access to the service’s underpinnings. They even fly in technicians to Europe and the US to prevent any non-Chinese from seeing how the service functions.