In his first congressional hearing, TikTok CEO Shou Chew tried to downplay TikTok’s ties to China and parent company ByteDance. But lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee were not satisfied with his answers.
In her opening remarks, the committee chair, Rep. Cathy Rodgers, said that TikTok should be banned. “ByteDance is beholden to the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]and ByteDance and TikTok are the same,” he said.
Chew, who in his written testimony said that “ByteDance is not an agent of China,” repeatedly pointed to Project Texas, the company’s sweeping plan to lock down American user data in the United States. But lawmakers on the committee were skeptical of the plan, which TikTok officials say would do more to protect users than an outright ban.
Chew repeated multiple times that US user data would be inaccessible to employees in other countries “after Project Texas” is completed later this year. Still, committee members were skeptical of the plan, which has been in the works for more than a year. Rodgers called it a “marketing scheme”, representative Frank Pallone said that “the Texas Project is simply not acceptable”, and representative Angie Craig said that the plan “doesn’t pass the sniff test”.
The more than five-hour standoff between Chew and lawmakers, who found suspected TikTok a rare source of bipartisan agreement, comes as US officials told the company it could ban the app if it doesn’t part ways with ByteDance. .
As in previous hearings with social media executives, lawmakers pressured Chew to answer yes or no to tough questions, and were frustrated when he refused to give one. In one exchange, representative Tony Cardenas asked Chew if ByteDance was a Chinese company. He would just admit that it was a “global” company with a Chinese founder. In another, Rep. Debbie Lesko asked if she would agree with a statement that the Chinese government persecutes the Uyghur population in China. She would just say that “it’s very worrying to hear about all kinds of human rights abuses” and she tried to spin to say that such statements are allowed on TikTok.
And Chew dodged other questions about the inner workings of ByteDance and its employees in China. He was heavily criticized for his response to a question about whether ByteDance employees had spied on US journalists. “I don’t think ‘spying’ is the right way to describe it,” Chew said. “This is ultimately an internal investigation.” (TikTok hastened to point Chew denied that there had been ‘espionage’ under the direction of the Chinese Communist Party).
The hearing was also notably different than previous hearings with the CEOs of other social media companies because the vast majority of lawmakers are not active on TikTok. However, not all of his questions were nuanced. At one point, Representative Richard Hudson required to to know if TikTok can “access the home WiFi network”. And several lawmakers asked why TikTok’s moderation practices are different from the aggressive censorship of its Chinese counterpart, Douyin.
Beyond national security concerns, several lawmakers have also raised the issue of teen safety, including TikTok’s content moderation practices and how it deals with viral “challenges.” Chew often pointed to recent updates like TikTok’s addition of a STEM-themed feed, new screen time settings, and algorithm tweaks to limit “repeating patterns” of potentially harmful content.
But, after more than five hours of cross-examination, it appeared that his testimony had not done much to persuade committee members that the Texas Project will be able to address their concerns.
For now, the future of TikTok is uncertain and even Chew seemed unwilling to speculate. Chinese officials said Thursday they oppose a TikTok sale. When asked at the hearing if he agreed with those comments, Chew pointed to the Texas Project. “We’ll have to look at this because the Texas Project is designed to move forward here in the United States and we’re not discussing this,” he said. .
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