TikTok CEO’s testimony in Congress gives few clues a couple of ban

The Home Vitality and Commerce Committee’s much-hyped listening to on TikTok, that includes CEO Shou Chew, occurred Thursday with out many fireworks. However over the course of 5 hours, lawmakers grilled Chew not solely about TikTok’s or his personal hyperlinks to China, but additionally points which are frequent throughout all social media platforms, just like the promotion of dangerous content material and the immense quantity of information they accumulate about their customers.

Members of the committee have been virtually uniformly crucial of TikTok, however many — although not all — eschewed the grandstanding that has change into extra frequent at high-profile hearings like this. As an alternative, they requested Chew issues that they really appeared to need solutions to.

This was Chew’s first look earlier than Congress, and he’s usually saved a low profile in the US till pretty not too long ago. So other than the polished and rare movies Chew has posted on TikTok itself, the listening to was the primary time many People obtained to see the corporate’s public face. Whereas the listening to was by no means going to make or break TikTok, if Chew actually blew it, his app’s future within the US could possibly be that a lot cloudier. And whereas he was at instances evasive and appeared unprepared for some questions that he will need to have identified could be requested, Chew’s huge day on Capitol Hill wasn’t a complete catastrophe. His efficiency in all probability received’t change anybody’s thoughts, both.

Thursday’s listening to was additionally Congress’s probability to make the case to the American those that the app is a nationwide safety risk that may solely be addressed by a ban. That allegation comes from the potential for the Chinese language authorities to acquire the info of TikTok’s 150 million US customers or affect its suggestion algorithms to push propaganda or disinformation on them. But that allegation has been backed up by little or no public proof that such issues are taking place, and so the unprecedented transfer of banning an app based mostly on that allegation has appeared excessive and probably pointless.

However once more, many members of the committee centered their questions not on nationwide safety however slightly on doubtlessly dangerous content material that TikTok pushes on youngsters and the potential impression that may have on them. It’s definitely true that TikTok is favored by youthful customers, and the app additionally has a suggestion algorithm that has been characterised as extra highly effective and elusive than its American counterparts. However youngsters’s issues of safety aren’t distinctive to TikTok — one thing many members of Congress additionally acknowledged — they usually additionally aren’t precisely a nationwide safety risk.

At instances, the listening to was extra about making the case for rules about social media and kids basically than it was concerning the nationwide safety risk posed by one app. And, like opposition to TikTok particularly, there’s a variety of bipartisan settlement that such industry-wide legal guidelines are wanted. If something comes out of this listening to, it could be these.

Whereas a variety of questions remained unanswered — and a few, arguably, went unasked — there have been a number of winners and losers.

Winner: The case for kids’s on-line security legal guidelines

For those who thought this listening to was simply going to be about TikTok’s hyperlinks to China, you have been fallacious. Members of the committee additionally interrogated Chew about algorithms that push content material about suicide, medication, and consuming issues on a weak viewers — all of the whereas accumulating information about them to become profitable. TikTok challenges, most particularly the “blackout problem” that has allegedly precipitated a number of deaths, additionally obtained a number of mentions (not talked about: Meta’s alleged position in spreading them). A number of suicide-related movies that have been sourced from TikTok have been used as one Congress member’s visible assist, although a kind of movies was a clip from Hulu’s The Bear.

The very fact is, these will not be TikTok-only issues, which Congress is aware of and the committee acknowledged within the listening to. Many members used the listening to to name for kids’s on-line security legal guidelines that will apply to all social media platforms. That’s not a coincidence. Whereas Congress has had bother coming collectively on how, why, and even when it ought to rein in Large Tech in terms of privateness, antitrust, and Part 230, there’s a vital bipartisan and bicameral consensus that one thing needs to be achieved to guard children. This listening to received’t be the very last thing you hear about it. —Sara Morrison

Loser: Shou Chew

Earlier than the committee had even taken its first break, the scene within the listening to room had began to really feel just like the Simpsons car parking zone combat meme. You recognize, the one the place Homer (dressed up as Krusty the Clown), beats up an actor taking part in a thief as children cry “cease, cease, he’s already lifeless!” Members of Congress confirmed TikTok’s CEO no mercy with their strains of questioning, lecturing, and clips of harmful content material discovered on the app. You could possibly argue that Chew by no means stood an opportunity.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Photographs

Chew had set himself up for failure earlier than coming into the room: A number of days earlier than showing on Capitol Hill, Chew posted a video to TikTok asserting a landmark 150 million People, or almost half of all US residents, now use TikTok each month. Then, in his opening assertion, Chew made the case that the app was completely enmeshed in American tradition, arguing that it supplies a platform for extra free speech and expression, for companies to develop, and for brief movies to counterpoint American life.

The one downside with this protection of TikTok is that these American lawmakers don’t suppose all of this quantities to factor. They’re satisfied TikTok is a hazard, and are involved exactly with how enmeshed in People’ lives the app actually is. Chew simply proved their level.

Chew additionally, usually, appeared unready for what number of questions he would get about TikTok’s inner processes, its ties to the Chinese language authorities and Communist Occasion, and the way information is used. —Christian Paz

Winner: Rep. Jay Obernotle

It’s no shock when members of Congress, who’re famously out of contact in terms of how the web works, barely appear to know among the technical questions they’re asking, not to mention the solutions. At the very least three completely different representatives within the listening to referred to as the app “Tic Tac,” which is a breath mint. However Jay Obernotle, the Republican from California who has an precise background in pc engineering, improvement, and synthetic intelligence, peppered Chew with questions concerning the logistics of Challenge Texas and the way it could be doable, technically, for it to present sufficient transparency into TikTok’s inside workings to mitigate nationwide safety issues. Due to this, when Obernolte got here to the conclusion that he didn’t suppose Challenge Texas would work, he was plausible. —SM

Loser: Challenge Texas

Challenge Texas is TikTok’s $1.5 billion try to be allowed to proceed to function within the US. The hassle intends to mitigate nationwide safety issues as a lot as doable by retaining all US person information within the nation’s borders on servers owned by an American firm, Oracle. There would even be some third-party oversight on each the entry to information and algorithmic suggestions. At one level, it appeared the Biden administration, via the interagency Committee on Overseas Investments in the US, would finalize this settlement. Nevertheless it didn’t, and it appears neither Congress nor TikTok has a lot religion in its future. There have been a number of notable exceptions, however by and enormous Congress didn’t appear significantly enthusiastic about Challenge Texas, besides to push Chew on why it wouldn’t be sufficient.

For his half, Chew gamely tried to defend what the corporate as soon as noticed as the important thing to TikTok’s future in America when given the uncommon alternative, saying, “I haven’t heard cause why it doesn’t work,” towards the top of the session. —SM

Al Drago/Bloomberg by way of Getty Photographs

Loser: TikTok’s transparency

Virtually each time members of Congress requested a selected query about how TikTok works, how a lot cash it’s making, or the ties between TikTok, its Chinese language dad or mum firm, and the Chinese language authorities, Chew would give an identical reply: That’s personal firm info that it doesn’t must disclose. In different situations, he deflected by merely saying he’d examine together with his staff and “get again to you.”

Rep. Tony Cardenas (D-CA), summed up the frustration within the room when he remarked on how his questions weren’t looking for out “commerce secrets and techniques.” “You remind me a variety of Mike [sic] Zuckerberg,” Cardenas mentioned. “When he got here right here, I mentioned to my employees, ‘He jogs my memory of Fred Astaire: dancer with phrases.’ And you might be doing the identical right this moment. Numerous your solutions are a bit nebulous. They don’t seem to be a sure or no reply.”

Republican and Democratic members ceaselessly reacted the identical strategy to Chew’s opaque solutions. Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) tied collectively a solution from Chew, wherein he declined to state how he was paid, to the issue of TikTok being foreign-owned: “For those who have been an American firm … we might see who your shareholders are. The reply you offered earlier right this moment — you’d ‘slightly not inform us what your compensation is or how it’s derived’ — no American CEO want to inform us that. However they must.” And he or she tied his ambivalent solutions to why Congress doesn’t purchase the Challenge Texas protection: “How will you say that you’re defending American customers’ privateness with the CCP being so closely concerned with ByteDance? It’s not doable.”

Chew didn’t assist his case for transparency when he discovered easy questions, like whether or not TikTok is a Chinese language firm or if TikTok helps genocide. —CP

Winner: Bipartisanship and good old style civility

Shou Chew did one thing uncommon in right this moment’s Congress: He united Democrats and Republicans on the Vitality and Commerce committee in a bipartisan condemnation of TikTok.

From the beginning of the listening to, this consensus was evident: “Let me say that I agree with a lot of what you simply mentioned,” Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), the rating member on the committee, mentioned in response to the Republican committee chair’s opening assertion. Two hours later, Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) made gentle of the grilling Chew had been enduring: “Welcome to probably the most bipartisan committee in Congress. We might not all the time agree on tips on how to get there, however we care about our nationwide safety, we care about our economic system, and we certain as heck care about our kids.” And later, when Cardenas took a break after asking about how a lot funding TikTok was planning to make in moderating Spanish-language content material, disinformation, and lethal or harmful content material, he chided Chew: “It’d sound slightly humorous, however you’ve the truth is been one of many few individuals to unite this committee — members, Republicans and Democrats — to lend a hand that we’re pissed off with TikTok. We’re upset with TikTok.”

That very same sentiment continued to pop up all through the greater than 4 hours of questioning and factors to the bigger downside TikTok has: It doesn’t have the lively help of something near a big variety of members of Congress, and it’s in a handy place for members to indicate their tough-on-China credentials. —CP