Skeptical U.S. lawmakers grill TikTok CEO over safety

WASHINGTON –

U.S. lawmakers grilled the CEO of TikTook over knowledge safety and dangerous content material Thursday, responding skeptically throughout a tense committee listening to to his assurances that the vastly common video-sharing app prioritizes person security and shouldn’t be banned.

Shou Zi Chew’s testimony got here at an important time for the corporate, which has acquired 150 million American customers however is beneath growing stress from U.S. officers. TikTook and its mother or father firm ByteDance have been swept up in a wider geopolitical battle between Beijing and Washington over commerce and know-how.

In a uncommon bipartisan effort to reign within the energy of a serious social media platform, Republican and Democratic lawmakers pressed Chew on a bunch of subjects, starting from TikTook’s content material moderation practices, how the corporate plans to safe American knowledge from Beijing, and its spying on journalists.

“Mr. Chew, you are here because the American people need the truth about the threat TikTok poses to our national and personal security,” Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican, mentioned in her opening assertion. “TikTok has repeatedly chosen a path for more control, more surveillance and more manipulation.”

Chew, a 40-year-old Singapore native, advised the House Committee on Energy and Commerce that TikTook prioritizes the protection of its younger customers and denied allegations that it is a nationwide safety threat. He reiterated the corporate’s plan to guard U.S. person knowledge by storing all such info on servers maintained and owned by the software program large Oracle.

“Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country,” Chew mentioned.

On Wednesday, the corporate despatched dozens of common TikTokers to Capitol Hill to foyer lawmakers to protect the platform. It has additionally been placing up adverts throughout Washington that promise to safe customers’ knowledge and privateness, and create a secure platform for its younger customers.

TikTook has been dogged by claims that its Chinese possession means person knowledge may find yourself within the arms of the Chinese authorities or that it may very well be used to advertise narratives favorable to the nation’s Communist leaders.

In 2019, the Guardian reported that TikTook was instructing its moderators to censor movies that point out Tiananmen Square and different photos unfavorable to the Chinese authorities. The platform says it has since modified its moderation practices.

ByteDance admitted in December that it fired 4 staff final summer time who accessed knowledge on two journalists, in addition to different folks linked to them, whereas trying to trace down the supply of a leaked report concerning the firm.

For its half, TikTook has been making an attempt to distance itself from its Chinese origins, saying that 60% p.c of its mother or father firm ByteDance is owned by world institutional buyers equivalent to Carlyle Group. ByteDance was based by Chinese entrepreneurs in Beijing in 2012. Responding to a Wall Street Journal report, China mentioned it could oppose any U.S. makes an attempt to drive ByteDance to promote the app.

Chew pushed again in opposition to the concept TikTook’s possession was a difficulty in itself.

“Trust is about actions we take,” Chew mentioned. “Ownership is not at the core of addressing these concerns.”

In one of the vital dramatic moments, Republican Rep. Kat Cammack displayed a TikTook video that confirmed a taking pictures gun and a caption that included the House committee holding the listening to, with the precise date earlier than it was formally introduced.

“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 mentioned to Chew.

Lawmakers sought to color an image of TikTook as a Chinese-influenced firm considering gaining revenue at the price of Americans’ psychological and bodily well being. Committee members confirmed a bunch of TikTook movies that inspired customers to hurt themselves and commit suicide. Many questioned why the platform’s Chinese counterpart, Douyin, doesn’t have the identical controversial and probably harmful content material because the American product.

Chew responded that it is dependent upon the legal guidelines of the nation the place the app is working. He mentioned the corporate has about 40,000 moderators that monitor dangerous content material in addition to an algorithm that flags materials.

“I don’t think I can sit here and say that we are perfect in doing this,” Chew mentioned. “We do work very hard.”

A U.S. ban on an app can be unprecedented and it is unclear how the federal government would implement it.

Experts say officers may attempt to drive Apple and Google to take away TikTook from their app shops. The U.S. may additionally block entry to TikTook’s infrastructure and knowledge, seize its domains or drive web service suppliers like Comcast and Verizon to filter TikTook knowledge visitors, mentioned Ahmed Ghappour, a legal legislation and laptop safety professional who academics at Boston University School of Law.

But a tech savvy person may nonetheless get round restrictions by utilizing a digital non-public community to make it seem the person is abroad the place it is not blocked, he mentioned.

To keep away from a ban, TikTook has been making an attempt to promote officers on a $1.5 billion plan referred to as Project Texas, which routes all U.S. person knowledge to home servers owned and maintained by Oracle. Under the mission, entry to U.S. knowledge is managed by U.S. staff via a separate entity referred to as TikTook U.S. Data Security, which employs 1,500 folks, is run independently of ByteDance and can be monitored by outdoors observers.

As of October, all new U.S. person knowledge was being saved contained in the nation. The firm began deleting all historic U.S. person knowledge from non-Oracle servers this month, in a course of anticipated to be accomplished later this yr, Chew mentioned.

Generally, researchers have mentioned TikTook behaves like different social media corporations in the case of knowledge assortment. In an evaluation launched in 2021, the University of Toronto’s nonprofit Citizen Lab discovered TikTook and Facebook gather related quantities of person knowledge.

To block such monitoring, Congress, the White House, U.S. armed forces and greater than half of U.S. states have banned using the app from official units.

But wiping away all the information monitoring related to the platform would possibly show tough. In a report launched this month, the Cybersecurity firm Feroot mentioned so-called monitoring pixels from ByteDance, which gather person info, had been discovered on 30 U.S state web sites, together with some the place the app has been banned.

Other international locations together with Denmark, Canada, Great Britain and New Zealand, together with the European Union, have already banned TikTook from units issued to authorities staff.

David Kennedy, a former authorities intelligence officer who runs the cybersecurity firm TrustedSec, agrees with proscribing TikTook entry on government-issued telephones as a result of they may comprise delicate info. A nationwide ban, nevertheless, is perhaps too excessive, he mentioned.

“We have Tesla in China, we have Microsoft in China, we have Apple in China. Are they going to start banning us now?” Kennedy mentioned. “It could escalate very quickly.”

Associated Press reporter Kelvin Chan contributed to this story from London.