TikTok CEO’s testimony in Congress provides few clues a few ban

The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s much-hyped listening to on TikTok, that includes CEO Shou Chew, came about Thursday with out many fireworks. But over the course of 5 hours, lawmakers grilled Chew not solely about TikTok’s or his personal hyperlinks to China, but in addition points which can be widespread throughout all social media platforms, just like the promotion of dangerous content material and the immense quantity of knowledge they gather about their customers.

Members of the committee had been virtually uniformly essential of TikTok, however many — although not all — eschewed the grandstanding that has turn into extra widespread at high-profile hearings like this. Instead, they requested Chew issues that they really appeared to need solutions to.

This was Chew’s first look earlier than Congress, and he’s typically stored a low profile within the United States till pretty lately. So apart from the polished and rare movies Chew has posted on TikTok itself, the listening to was the primary time many Americans received to see the corporate’s public face. While 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 may very well be that a lot cloudier. And whereas he was at instances evasive and appeared unprepared for some questions that he should have recognized can be requested, Chew’s massive day on Capitol Hill wasn’t a complete catastrophe. His efficiency in all probability gained’t change anybody’s thoughts, both.

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

But once more, many members of the committee targeted their questions not on nationwide safety however reasonably on probably dangerous content material that TikTok pushes on kids and the potential influence that may have on them. It is actually true that TikTok is favored by youthful customers, and the app additionally has a advice algorithm that has been characterised as extra highly effective and elusive than its American counterparts. But kids’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 laws about social media and youngsters normally than it was concerning the nationwide safety risk posed by one app. And, like opposition to TikTok particularly, there’s lots of bipartisan settlement that such industry-wide legal guidelines are wanted. If something comes out of this listening to, it might be these.

While lots 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

If you thought this listening to was simply going to be about TikTok’s hyperlinks to China, you had been mistaken. Members of the committee additionally interrogated Chew about algorithms that push content material about suicide, medicine, and consuming issues on a susceptible viewers — all of the whereas gathering information about them to earn cash. TikTok challenges, most particularly the “blackout challenge” that has allegedly brought about a number of deaths, additionally received a number of mentions (not talked about: Meta’s alleged position in spreading them). Multiple suicide-related movies that had been sourced from TikTok had been used as one Congress member’s visible support, although a type of movies was a clip from Hulu’s The Bear.

The reality is, these usually are not 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 might apply to all social media platforms. That’s not a coincidence. While Congress has had hassle coming collectively on how, why, and even when it ought to rein in Big Tech relating to privateness, antitrust, and Section 230, there’s a vital bipartisan and bicameral consensus that one thing must be carried out to guard youngsters. This listening to gained’t be the very last thing you hear about it. —Sara Morrison

Loser: Shou Chew

Before 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 struggle meme. You know, the one the place Homer (dressed up as Krusty the Clown), beats up an actor enjoying a thief as youngsters cry “stop, stop, he’s already dead!” Members of Congress confirmed TikTok’s CEO no mercy with their traces of questioning, lecturing, and clips of harmful content material discovered on the app. You might argue that Chew by no means stood an opportunity.

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Chew had set himself up for failure earlier than coming into the room: Just a few days earlier than showing on Capitol Hill, Chew posted a video to TikTok saying a landmark 150 million Americans, 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 totally enmeshed in American tradition, arguing that it offers a platform for extra free speech and expression, for companies to develop, and for brief movies to counterpoint American life.

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

Chew additionally, typically, appeared unready for what number of questions he would get about TikTok’s inner processes, its ties to the Chinese authorities and Communist Party, 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 relating to how the web works, barely appear to know a few of the technical questions they’re asking, not to mention the solutions. At least three totally different representatives within the listening to known as the app “Tic Tac,” which is a breath mint. But Jay Obernotle, the Republican from California who has an precise background in laptop engineering, improvement, and synthetic intelligence, peppered Chew with questions concerning the logistics of Project Texas and the way it will be potential, technically, for it to offer sufficient transparency into TikTok’s interior workings to mitigate nationwide safety issues. Because of this, when Obernolte got here to the conclusion that he didn’t suppose Project Texas would work, he was plausible. —SM

Loser: Project Texas

Project Texas is TikTok’s $1.5 billion try to be allowed to proceed to function within the US. The effort intends to mitigate nationwide safety issues as a lot as potential by retaining all US consumer 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 Foreign Investments within the United States, would finalize this settlement. But it didn’t, and it appears neither Congress nor TikTok has a lot religion in its future. There had been a number of notable exceptions, however by and huge Congress didn’t appear notably concerned with Project 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 a good reason why it doesn’t work,” towards the tip of the session. —SM

Al Drago/Bloomberg through Getty Images

Loser: TikTok’s transparency

Almost 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 mother or father firm, and the Chinese authorities, Chew would give an identical reply: That’s non-public firm data that it doesn’t must disclose. In different situations, he deflected by merely saying he’d examine along with his workforce and “get back to you.”

Rep. Tony Cardenas (D-CA), summed up the frustration within the room when he remarked on how his questions weren’t in search of out “trade secrets.” “You remind me a lot of Mike [sic] Zuckerberg,” Cardenas mentioned. “When he came here, I said to my staff, ‘He reminds me of Fred Astaire: a good dancer with words.’ And you are doing the same today. A lot of your answers are a bit nebulous. They are not a yes or no answer.”

Republican and Democratic members often reacted the identical option to Chew’s opaque solutions. Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) tied collectively a solution from Chew, through which he declined to state how he was paid, to the issue of TikTok being foreign-owned: “If you were an American company … we could see who your shareholders are. The answer you provided earlier today — you would ‘rather not tell us what your compensation is or how it is derived’ — no American CEO would like to tell us that. But they have to.” And she tied his ambivalent solutions to why Congress doesn’t purchase the Project Texas protection: “How can you say that you are protecting American users’ privacy with the CCP being so heavily involved with ByteDance? It’s not possible.”

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

Winner: Bipartisanship and good old style civility

Shou Chew did one thing uncommon in right now’s Congress: He united Democrats and Republicans on the Energy 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 much of what you just said,” 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 the most bipartisan committee in Congress. We may not always agree on how to get there, but we care about our national security, we care about our economy, and we sure as heck care about our children.” 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 might sound a little funny, but you have in fact been one of the few people to unite this committee — members, Republicans and Democrats — to be in agreement that we are frustrated with TikTok. We are upset with TikTok.”

That identical 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 assist of something near a big variety of members of Congress, and it’s in a handy place for members to point out their tough-on-China credentials. —CP