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As congressional members from both parties sharpened their rhetorical knives in preparation for TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew’s testimony Thursday, the embattled company launched a counteroffensive.
On Tuesday, TikTok said it had updated rules and standards for content, and Chew said in a 69-second video on TikTok (where else?) that the hearing “comes at a pivotal moment” for the 150 million Americans who use the video-sharing app. TikTok is owned by Chinese company ByteDance Ltd.
“Some politicians have started talking about banning TikTok. Now this could take TikTok away from all 150 million of you,” Chew said in the video, which shows him standing near a window with U.S. Capitol in the background. “I’ll be testifying before Congress this week to share all that we’re doing to protect Americans using the app.”
In prepared remarks for Congress, Chew vows that “TikTok will remain a platform for free expression and will not be manipulated by any government.” He also pledges safety as a top priority for all users, particularly teenagers, and promises to firewall U.S. user data from foreign access while keeping the platform free from government interference.
The most consequential potential action is a U.S. ban on TikTok over the company’s privacy and data-security practices, as well as its relationship with the Chinese government. “TikTok needs to be regulated immediately,” Sen. Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat and the author of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, said in a statement Wednesday. “We can agree on that.” He noted, however, that “it is absolutely not the only digital danger kids face today.”
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, also a Democrat, recently introduced the Restrict Act to address the threat posed by the use of technology such as TikTok by foreign adversaries. “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,” Warner said in a statement.
Chew’s first appearance before Congress comes as President Joe Biden has expressed his support for a bipartisan bill to ban TikTok in the U.S. Ratcheting up its pressure campaign, the administration has issued an ultimatum: If TikTok’s Chinese owners don’t sell their stakes in the company, the app could face a U.S. ban. Last month, the White House said it was giving U.S. federal agencies 30 days to delete TikTok from all government-issued mobile devices.
“What could be different this time is that the U.K. and U.S. governments have banned TikTok on government devices,” said Eric Noonan, CEO of CyberSheath, a cybersecurity compliance service provider. “We are slowly getting to an outright ban. In many ways, TikTok is a global intelligence network that is potentially collecting data around the world from millions. It is a forward-deployed intelligence network run by the Chinese government.”
Last week, Chew told the Wall Street Journal that the Biden administration’s demand that Chinese stakeholders in TikTok divest wouldn’t address the concerns U.S. officials have raised.
There is also the question of what authority U.S. lawmakers could impose. If lawmakers want to encourage the sale of TikTok to an American company, for example, what company might that be? The most logical candidate, Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc.
META,
recently fended off opposition from the Federal Trade Commission over its purchase of virtual-reality app maker Within and still faces FTC resistance over its years-ago acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.
Nearly all efforts by the federal government over the past few years to come down on influential tech companies have foundered. In addition to the FTC’s high-profile loss to Meta, legislative efforts to rein in anticompetitive business practices have fizzled in Congress. Meanwhile, Justice Department lawsuits against Google are proceeding slowly.
“The Trump White House felt more hostile than now. This pressure feels more politically motivated,” said Matt Soeth, head of trust and safety at Spectrum Labs, an AI-based content-moderation platform that identifies toxic behaviors in text and voice content across languages. From early 2020 to mid-2021, he served on TikTok’s global trust and safety team. “But this could open the door to other countries doing the same to U.S. companies overseas over objections to their business practices,” he noted.
Underscoring the difficulty of reining in a popular app like TikTok, the president on Friday appeared in a video on the app with Irish singer Niall Horan at the White House St. Patrick’s Day party. When asked last month if the U.S. should ban TikTok, Biden said, “I’m not sure.”
A sharply divided populace mirrors Biden’s uncertainty. Nearly half of Americans (49%) support a TikTok ban in the U.S., while 42% oppose a ban, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll.
What is more, TikTok is an important driver of the U.S. economy. The company’s U.S. ad revenue is expected to surge 36% to $6.83 billion in 2023, according to market-research firm Insider Intelligence.
With its 2.5% slice of the U.S. digital ad market, TikTok has made inroads against the likes of market leaders Google and Meta, both of which have ramped up their own short-form video offerings.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, who calls Thursday’s hearing a “moment of truth” for TikTok, believes rivals Snap Inc.
SNAP,
and Meta will benefit from governmental “disruption” of Chew and his company.
