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

The Home Power and Commerce Committee’s much-hyped listening to on TikTok, that includes CEO Shou Chew, came about 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 might 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 have been nearly uniformly essential of TikTok, however many — although not all — eschewed the grandstanding that has turn into extra widespread at high-profile hearings like this. As a substitute, 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 stored a low profile in the US till pretty lately. So other than the polished and rare movies Chew has posted on TikTok itself, the listening to was the primary time many Individuals acquired 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 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 could 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 menace that may solely be addressed by a ban. That allegation comes from the potential for the Chinese language authorities to acquire the information 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 primarily based 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 quite on doubtlessly dangerous content material that TikTok pushes on kids and the potential influence that may have on them. It’s actually 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 kids’s questions of safety aren’t distinctive to TikTok — one thing many members of Congress additionally acknowledged — and so they additionally aren’t precisely a nationwide safety menace.

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

Whereas plenty 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

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

The actual fact is, these aren’t 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 may 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 Massive Tech on the subject of privateness, antitrust, and Part 230, there’s a important bipartisan and bicameral consensus that one thing needs to be completed to guard children. This listening to gained’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 parking zone combat meme. You realize, the one the place Homer (dressed up as Krusty the Clown), beats up an actor enjoying 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 may argue that Chew by no means stood an opportunity.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Photos

Chew had set himself up for failure earlier than getting into the room: Just a few days earlier than showing on Capitol Hill, Chew posted a video to TikTok saying a landmark 150 million Individuals, or practically 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 supplies a platform for extra free speech and expression, for companies to develop, and for brief movies to complement American life.

The one downside with this protection of TikTok is that these American lawmakers don’t suppose all of this quantities to a very good factor. They’re satisfied TikTok is a hazard, and are involved exactly with how enmeshed in Individuals’ 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 on the subject of how the web works, barely appear to grasp a number of the technical questions they’re asking, not to mention the solutions. Not less than three totally different representatives within the listening to known as the app “Tic Tac,” which is a breath mint. However Jay Obernotle, the Republican from California who has an precise background in laptop engineering, growth, and synthetic intelligence, peppered Chew with questions concerning the logistics of Venture Texas and the way it might be attainable, technically, for it to present sufficient transparency into TikTok’s interior workings to mitigate nationwide safety considerations. Due to this, when Obernolte got here to the conclusion that he didn’t suppose Venture Texas would work, he was plausible. —SM

Loser: Venture Texas

Venture Texas is TikTok’s $1.5 billion try to be allowed to proceed to function within the US. The trouble intends to mitigate nationwide safety considerations as a lot as attainable by protecting 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, by way of the interagency Committee on Overseas Investments in the US, would finalize this settlement. But it surely 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 huge Congress didn’t appear significantly curious about Venture 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 very good motive why it doesn’t work,” towards the top of the session. —SM

Al Drago/Bloomberg through Getty Photos

Loser: TikTok’s transparency

Nearly each time members of Congress requested a particular query about how TikTok works, how a lot cash it’s making, or the ties between TikTok, its Chinese language father or mother firm, and the Chinese language authorities, Chew would give the same reply: That’s personal firm info that it doesn’t need to disclose. In different situations, he deflected by merely saying he’d test 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 plenty of Mike [sic] Zuckerberg,” Cardenas mentioned. “When he got here right here, I mentioned to my employees, ‘He jogs my memory of Fred Astaire: a very good dancer with phrases.’ And you might be doing the identical at the moment. A number of your solutions are a bit nebulous. They aren’t a sure or no reply.”

Republican and Democratic members often reacted the identical approach 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: “When you have been an American firm … we may see who your shareholders are. The reply you supplied earlier at the moment — you’d ‘quite not inform us what your compensation is or how it’s derived’ — no American CEO wish to inform us that. However they need to.” And she or he tied his ambivalent solutions to why Congress doesn’t purchase the Venture Texas protection: “How are you going to say that you’re defending American customers’ privateness with the CCP being so closely concerned with ByteDance? It’s not attainable.”

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 school civility

Shou Chew did one thing uncommon in at the moment’s Congress: He united Democrats and Republicans on the Power 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 could not all the time agree on the right way to get there, however we care about our nationwide safety, we care about our economic system, and we certain as heck care about our youngsters.” 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 would sound a little bit humorous, however you’ve gotten in reality been one of many few individuals to unite this committee — members, Republicans and Democrats — to have the same opinion that we’re annoyed 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 energetic help 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