TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew got a verbal smackdown from the House Energy and Commerce Committee panel as both Republicans and Democrats grilled him over data security and harmful content on Thursday.
From the start of the high-profile hearing, tensions ran high as Chew tried to offer his assurances that the hugely popular video-sharing app prioritizes user safety and should not be banned.
Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican, fired the opening salvo: ‘Mr. Chew, you are here because the American people need the truth about the threat TikTok poses to our national and personal security. TikTok has repeatedly chosen a path for more control, more surveillance and more manipulation.’
Chew retorted: ‘Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country,’
TikTok has been trying to distance itself from its Chinese origins, but that narrative was rendered disingenuous after the Wall Street Journal reported that China would oppose any U.S. attempts to force ByteDance to sell the app just before the hearing.
‘Your platform should be banned,’ Rodgers went on. ‘I expect today you’ll say anything to avoid this outcome, but you are 100 percent responsible for anything TikTok does.’
‘The facts show that ByteDance is beholden to the CCP,’ Rodgers said.
In a rare bipartisan show, Democrats, including ranking member Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., pressed Chew on the social media platform’s content moderation practices, how the company plans to secure American data from Beijing and spying on journalists.
Pallone, however, seemed less inclined to throw out the Chinese video-sharing app entirely. He said TikTok ‘threatens privacy and security … in its current form.’
Some committee members argued that TikTok is not doing enough content moderation.
Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., decried that users weren’t getting access to information on how to self-administer abortions and are seeing Covid-19 ‘misinformation’ on hydroxychloroquine.
Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., played a compilation of TikToks that displayed pro-suicide content. ‘Your technology is literally leading to death,’ he said.
Dean and Michelle Naska, whose son Chase allegedly committed suicide after receiving unsolicited suicidal videos in TikTok, were in the room. Dean broke down into tears as clips encouraging suicide were blasted onto the screen at the hearing.
In dramatic testimony, Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla., pulled up a TikTok of someone unloading a gun and threatening the Energy and Commerce hearing. The video had been on the platform for 41 days, but was removed after Cammack played it at the hearing.
‘You expect us to believe that you are capable of maintaining the data security, privacy and security of 150 million Americans where you can’t even protect the people in this room,’ Cammack said to Chew
At one point, Chew was asked whether parent company ByteDance has spied on Americans at the behest of the CCP.
‘I don’t think ‘spying’ is the right way to describe it,’ Chew responded.
‘Welcome to the most bipartisan committee in Congress,’ Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., said. He asked Chew whether TikTok’s equivalent in China hosts ‘deadly challenge’ videos aimed at children like the U.S. version.
Chew said he did not know. ‘You heard the chair lady [about lying being a crime],’ Carter said.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew spent a grueling 4.5 hours of questioning from a congressional committee that largely came in with a preconceived notion that the app spews propaganda and poses a risk to national security.
At one point, Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C. asked the CEO how much he gets paid. ‘I prefer to keep my compensation private,’ he said.
Rodgers pressed Chew over reports TikTok removes content at the request of the CCP.
‘Have any moderation tools been used to remove content on TikTok associated with the Uyghur genocide?’ she asked.
‘We do not remove that kind of content. TikTok is a place of freedom of expression,’ Chew said.
