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5 Lessons to learn from TikTok CEO’s first Congress appearance

Five lessons to learn from TikTok CEO’s first appearance before Congress, according to the hot seat 

Shou Chew, the CEO of TikTok, testified before Congress for the first time on Thursday. Throughout the hearing, lawmakers questioned him extensively about his company’s efforts to safeguard US user data and allay worries about its ties to China. 

The Chew does extremely few interviews, so it was a rare opportunity for the public to hear from him. Yet, his company’s app is one of the most widely used in America, with more than 150 million users. 

The main conclusions from the hearing on Thursday are listed below. Washington has already decided what it thinks of TikTok. 

A lawmaker’s demands to outlaw the app in the United States marked the beginning of the lengthy, contentious hearing, which lasted more than five hours. It provided a striking illustration of the effort from both political parties to rein in the well-liked short-form video app and the company’s uphill struggle to mend fences with Washington. 

The chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Washington Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, said to Shou at the start of the hearing on Thursday: “Your platform should be prohibited.” Chew emphasized TikTok’s independence from China and played up its ties to the US in his evidence. In his opening remarks, he noted that TikTok isn’t available in mainland China, that the company has offices in Los Angeles and Singapore, and that there are currently 7,000 people working for it in the United States. Yet, there have been significant worries expressed regarding the possibility of unauthorized foreign access to US data and the potential for manipulation of the TikTok US ecosystem, Chew added. “Our strategy has never been to brush these worries off or minimize them. We have taken effective action to address them. 

In China, TikTok is not active. Theoretically, however, ByteDance and thus indirectly TikTok might be compelled to participate with a wide range of security measures, perhaps even the transfer of TikTok data, given the Chinese government’s considerable influence over enterprises that fall under its purview. 

Chew’s attempts to emphasize that his business is independent of the Chinese government mostly went unheard. Congress members frequently stopped the chief executive’s testimony to express their complete lack of faith in him. 

According to Rep. McMorris Rodgers, “To the American people watching today, hear this: TikTok is a weapon by the Chinese Communist Party to spy on you, influence what you view, and exploit for future generations.” 

In a conversation with California Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo, Chew praised TikTok’s ongoing efforts to safeguard US user data and asserted that there is “no evidence” that the Chinese government has access to it. He also stated that TikTok has “never been asked for, and we have not provided,” any such data. Eshoo responded, “I truly think that’s ludicrous. 

“I have peeked inside, and I have not seen any indication of anything happening,” Chew said. “Our promise is to transfer their data to the United States, where it will be stored by a US corporation under US management. So, the danger would be equivalent to any government asking an American corporation for data. 

I don’t think TikTok — or that you have spoken or done anything to convince us, Eshoo added. 

TikTok’s CEO emphasizes that its business methods are the same as those of American digital giants. 

Chew also underlined that the data TikTok gathers is data “that’s commonly collected by many other organizations in our industry” as lawmakers stepped up their inquiries about the platform’s data collecting procedures. 

Tyumen, Russia – January 21, 2020: TikTok and Facebook application on screen Apple iPhone XR

We pledge to be completely open and honest with our users regarding the information we gather, according to Chew. “I don’t think what we collect is more than the majority of the industry players,” 

Chew’s claims have been supported by unaffiliated studies. The Washington Post and a privacy analyst examined TikTok in 2020 and came to the conclusion that it seemed to collect no more data than your normal major social network. The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto employed Taiwan-based researcher Pellaeon Lin the following year, who conducted a different technical investigation and came to the same conclusions. 

Even if TikTok gathers roughly the same amount of data as Facebook or Twitter, that’s still a lot of information, including details about the videos you watch, comments you make, private messages you send, and — if you consent to this degree of access — your precise geolocation and contact lists. (On Thursday, Chew claimed that the most recent iterations of TikTok do not save exact Location data from American users.) 

TikTok’s influence on kids is a major area of attention 

While the session was intended to be primarily focused on national security, some lawmakers also raised worries about TikTok’s effects on minors. 

For instance, the ranking member of the committee and Democratic representative from New Jersey, Frank Pallone, stated on Thursday that “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.” 

A 10-year-old girl from Pennsylvania died after attempting to duplicate the challenge in the video, according to Rep. Bob Latta, a Republican from Ohio, who said TikTok promoted a video on the choking challenge or “blackout challenge” to her stream. 

Gus Bilirakis, a Republican congressman from Florida, added that there is insufficient content monitoring, which allows children to be exposed to material that encourages self harm. 

Bilirakis told Chew, “Your technology is literally leading to death.” 

He gave examples of hazardous content being served to youngsters and stated, “It is intolerable, sir, that you still pretend that TikTok is something wonderful to behold even after knowing all these dangers.” 

For its part, TikTok has introduced a number of features in recent months to offer extra protections for younger users, such as introducing a new 60-minute daily time limit as the default for users under the age of 18. Even that provision, though, drew criticism from lawmakers for being too simple for teenagers to get around. 

Chew was slammed for dodging inquiries. According to TikTok, Congress wasn’t interested in his responses. 

Rep. Tony Cárdenas, a Democrat from California, criticized Chew for what he perceived to be his evasive remarks and contrasted him with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who in the past has also irritated certain members of Congress with his testimony. 

Chew was one of the select few who had managed to bring the committee together, Cárdenas said to him. “You’re really reminiscent of Mark Zuckerberg. He reminds me of Fred Astaire; he’s a wonderful dancer with words, I told my employees when he first arrived here. The same is being done by you right now. Several of your responses are ambiguous; they don’t have a clear yes or no. 

In 2018, following the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, Zuckerberg spent hours testifying before the same congressional committee. Both Chew and Zuckerberg are in charge of large social media companies, but Zuckerberg was already well-known when he appeared before Congress in 2018. After taking over as CEO of TikTok in 2021, Chew has largely avoided the spotlight. 

Getting ready for his appearance Chew has been practicing for the past week in nearly daily, lengthy sessions, CNN learnt on Thursday. Throughout these meetings, TikTok employees sought to improve Chew’s presentation. In order to prepare Chew for hours of nonstop questioning, they have acted as lawmakers and used a variety of questioning techniques. They have flooded Chew with practice questions and scenarios. 

Congress, according to TikTok, was not interested in hearing Chew’s responses. 

Brooke Oberwetter, a representative for TikTok, said in a statement to CNN following the meeting, “Shou arrived prepared to answer questions from Congress.” Nevertheless, regrettably, the day was dominated by political showboating that ignored the effective remedies already in place. 

Rep. Kat Cammack’s extensive criticism of TikTok’s content filtering and connections to China may have been the interaction that best encapsulated Thursday’s hearing. 

Chair, may I speak up? Once Cammack finished, Chew questioned McMorris Rodgers. 

McMorris Rodgers gave Chew a fleeting thought. 

“No. We’re going to continue,” she declared. 

Increased rhetoric from the federal government 

Federal representatives seemed to intensify their criticism on TikTok outside the hearing chamber. 

Although there are “various methods to achieve it,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said TikTok should be “terminated one way or another.” At a different House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting, Blinken said he wasn’t sure if TikTok’s divestiture from its Chinese parent company would be adequate. 

The senior American ambassador expressed his belief that the software poses a threat to US national security, but he refrained from saying that it should be outright forbidden. He stated, “Obviously, we, the administration, and others are struck with the issue that it poses and are taking measures to solve it. 

The US Treasury Department, which oversees the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS), issued a separate statement on Thursday in which it specifically avoided mentioning or naming TikTok but warned that it “will not clear any transaction unless it determines there are no unresolved national security concerns.” 

“In general, some transactions can present data security risks,” a Department spokesperson said. “This includes giving a foreign person or government access to vast amounts of Americans’ sensitive personal data as well as access to intellectual property, source code, or other potentially sensitive information.” The preservation of national security will be ensured by CFIUS “on a case-by-case basis, including to avoid the exploitation of data through espionage, tracking, and other techniques that harm national security.” 

CFIUS and TikTok have been working on a potential agreement for more than two years. If successful, it would allow the service to continue operating in the US while addressing US security concerns. 

But in his evidence, Chew made an effort to allay long-standing worries about the app and dismissed the worry that the Chinese government would gain access to user data on TikTok as “hypothetical.” 

Many of the hazards mentioned, in my opinion, are merely speculative and theoretical, said Chew. “I have not encountered any proof. Discussions where we can analyze the evidence and then address the issues stated are ones I am eagerly anticipating.

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