TikTok CEO Shou Chew has made his first appearance before the United States Congress, where he was immediately hit by fierce criticism from lawmakers, including calls for the app to be banned.
Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, opened Thursday’s hearing by tearing into TikTok.
“Your platform should be banned,” she told Shou.
“I expect today you’ll say anything to avoid this outcome.
” … We aren’t buying it. In fact, when you celebrate the 150 million American users on TikTok, it emphasises the urgency for Congress to act.
“That is 150 million Americans that the [Chinese Communist Party] can collect sensitive information on.”
In his opening remarks, Chew attempted to stress TikTok’s independence from China and played up its US ties.
“TikTok itself is not available in mainland China, we’re headquartered in Los Angeles and Singapore, and we have 7000 employees in the US today,” he said.
“Still, we have heard important concerns about the potential for unwanted foreign access to US data and potential manipulation of the TikTok US ecosystem.
“Our approach has never been to dismiss or trivialise any of these concerns. We have addressed them with real action.”
As lawmakers doubled down on their questions about TikTok’s data collection practices, Chew also emphasised that the data TikTok collects is data “that’s frequently collected by many other companies in our industry”.
“We are committed to be very transparent with our users about what we collect,” Chew said.
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“I don’t believe what we collect is more than most players in the industry.”
Multiple lawmakers have also highlighted concerns about TikTok’s impact on children, including Democratic ranking member of the committee Representative Frank Pallone.
“Research has found that TikTok’s algorithms recommend videos to teens that create and exacerbate feelings of emotional distress, including videos promoting suicide, self-harm and eating disorders,” he said.
“Let me state this unequivocally,” Chew will say, according to a copy of his remarks released by a House panel. “ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country.”
His written remarks also defend ByteDance’s corporate structure and outlines steps the company has taken, and plans to take, to resolve fears the Chinese government could gain access to TikTok user data through its potential influence over ByteDance. Among those steps is a vow to “firewall” US user data from “unauthorised foreign access”.
Chew’s moment in the hot seat comes as some lawmakers are renewing calls for the app to be banned in the United States due to perceived national security concerns because of its ties to China through its parent company, ByteDance.
TikTok acknowledged to CNN last week that federal officials are demanding the app’s Chinese owners sell their stake in the social media platform, or risk facing a US ban of the app. A number of countries, including the US, have already instituted a ban of the app on government devices due to the security concerns.
With his appearance, Chew may hope to temper the heated rhetoric in Washington about the app — but to do so, he must confront a tremendous amount of scepticism from lawmakers about TikTok, and himself.
“While I appreciate Mr Chew’s willingness to answer questions before Congress, TikTok’s lack of transparency, repeated obfuscations, and misstatements of fact have severely undermined the credibility of any statements by TikTok employees, including Mr Chew,” Senator Mark R Warner, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement Wednesday.
As scrutiny from lawmakers’ mounts, however, so does the app’s popularity and reach in the United States. Just this week, Chew released a TikTok video where he announced the app has amassed more than 150 million US users, or “almost half the US”, as he put it. TikTok was the top downloaded app in the United States in 2021 and 2022, according to data from analytics firm Sensor Tower.
In the months leading up to his appearance on Capitol Hill, Chew, who rarely gave interviews previously, has gone on a media tour in the United States.
He’s met with lawmakers and given a number of interviews and public remarks aimed at saving the app in the US.
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His overarching message: TikTok has become essential to American culture, and to the creators and small business owners who now rely on the app for their livelihoods.
On the eve of the hearing, dozens of TikTok creators who oppose a ban held an impassioned press conference on Capitol grounds with Congressman Jamaal Bowman, a Democrat from New York. TikTok flew out some of the creators, the company confirmed to CNN.
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