Shou Zi Chew put on a poker face.
There was reason to be upset: The chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Republican Cathy Rodgers, began the session by saying things like this: “To the American public, TikTok is a weapon of the Chinese Communist Party.”
He still added that the app should be banned across the country, an idea that is gaining ground among lawmakers and which the White House supports with the ultimatum that the Chinese owner, ByteDance, sell the app or they will close
The chief executive of TikTok, in the first appearance in the US Congress, heard the accusation of espionage and others, some as terrible as the mental damage to children and teenagers with the “addictive algorithm”.
It was subjected to a tough session, fried with questions charged with high voltage, although Chew tried to soften the legislators in his presentation. He emphasized that he is originally from Singapore, with studies in the UK and the US, where he met his wife. “He was born a few kilometers from here,” he said.
After alluding to the more than 1 billion monthly active users, of which 150 million are in the US, Chew stressed that they spend a lot of time protecting teenagers and “we learned the lesson from those who came before.”
“Many of the measures we have adopted are the first in the social networking industry,” he said. “We prohibit direct messages between children under 16 years of age. We have a viewing time of 60 minutes by default for those under 18 and we have a space for parents to participate in their children’s experience”, he specified.
“We want TikTok to be a place where teenagers can come and learn,” he insisted. All his words seemed to crumble like a house of cards when Republican Michael Bilirakis played a compilation of suicide videos accompanied by ominous music.
Chew, who has struggled at times due to harassment, assured that the platform takes mental health very seriously and referred those asking about suicide or death to the platform’s safety page. “We don’t buy that,” replied Rodgers. In reality, with his answers, sometimes challenging, he did nothing more than deepen the abyss of mistrust of congressmen, as when he remarked that TikTok does not sell information to anyone.
“We have a firewall to protect our data from interference by any government,” he pointed out. This would include China, which has already announced that it will oppose any forced sale. This cast doubt on Chew’s claim that ByteDance is not controlled by the Beijing government. He detailed that it is a private company made up of investors (almost 60%), the founders (20%) and the workers (20%). Three of the five board members are from the United States.
“The key is that the data of the Americans is in the territory of the United States, monitored by Americans”, he insisted.
However, the legislator Bob Latta required him with a “yes no” regarding the access of Chinese workers, including engineers, to the information of the Americans. Chew drew incredulous laughs with his retort: ??”This is a complex affair.”
