TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew issued a response – in the form of a TikTok clip – after the U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass legislature that could ban the platform in the United States.
The House voted Wednesday, 352-65, with representatives on both sides of the aisle banding together to pass the bill. It now heads to the Senate, where it faces an uncertain future.
Politicians have long voiced their concern about TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, which is headquartered in Beijing and suspected to have ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
President Joe Biden has committed to signing the bill, which would force ByteDance to sell TikTok within six months or be banned from app stores and web-hosting services.
Chew, 41, released a video on the official TikTok account on X, formerly Twitter, Wednesday evening. The CEO introduced himself using his first name before launching into his remarks.
‘Just wanted to share some thoughts with our US users about the disappointing vote in the House of Representatives,’ he said. ‘There has been a lot of misinformation and I hope to clarify some things.’
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew released a video response Wednesday following a U.S. House of Representatives vote on a bill that would ban the platform in the United States
Politicians have repeatedly raised concerns about TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, which is headquartered in Beijing and suspected to have ties to the Chinese Communist Party
He thanked the platform’s 1.7 billion-strong community for ‘making (their) voices heard.’ As of March 2023, at least 150 million users were based in the United States, though that number is estimated at around 170 million now.
‘Over the last few years, we have invested to keep your data safe and our platform free from outside manipulation. We have committed to that and continue to do so,’ Shou continued.
Whistleblowers within the company, most notably former ByteDance employee Yintao Yu, have previously sounded the alarm on lax data privacy.
Yu, who served as the head of engineering for ByteDance’s U.S. operations between August 2017 and November 2018, sued the company in May 2023.
In the complaint he claimed a group of CCP members nicknamed ‘The Committee’ were installed at offices in Beijing and able to view all data collected by the company, including data from the United States.
In 2022, TikTok announced Project Texas, an unprecedented initiative to store all U.S. user data on servers within the country.
By June of that year, the platform reported that all U.S. user traffic was being rerouted to cloud infrastructure in the United States.
TikTok also announced that it would also delete ‘historic protected user data’ in data centers in both Virginia and Singapore.
Chew, 41, said TikTok was committed to keeping user data ‘safe’ and the platform ‘from outside manipulation’
The CEO urged the platform’s 170 million U.S. users to ‘continue sharing your voice,’ including with their senators
‘This legislation, if signed into law, will lead to a ban of TikTok in the United States,’ Chew said in Wednesday’s message. ‘Even the bill’s sponsors admit that’s their goal.’
He added the bill ‘gives more power to a handful of other social media companies,’ though did not mention them by name.
‘It will also take billions of dollars out of the pockets of creators and small businesses,’ Chew continued. ‘It will put more than 300,000 American jobs at risk and it will take away your TikTok.’
Addressing the users themselves, he continued: ‘We will not stop advocating for you and we will continue to do all we can, including exercising our legal rights, to protect this amazing platform we have built with you.’
He ended the video by urging users to continue sharing their voice with those around them, including their senators.
If the bill were to pass the Senate and be signed into law, TikTok would lose a substantial portion of its advertising market.
A 2022 study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found the app generated $2 billion in ad revenue from users aged 13-17 in the United States alone.
