TikTok CEO Shou Chew was grilled by lawmakers Thursday in a rare public appearance. Here are some takeaways from the contentious hearing.
Intro
Washington Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers , the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, opened Thursday's hearing by telling Shou:"Your platform should be banned." Much of Chew's attempts to stress that his company is not an arm of the Chinese government appeared to fall on deaf ears. Numerous members of Congress interrupted the chief executive's testimony to say they simply don't believe him.
Independent researchers have backed Chew's assertions. In 2020, The Washington Post worked with a privacy researcher to look under the hood at TikTok, concluding that the app does not appear to collect any more data than your typical mainstream social network. The following year, Pellaeon Lin, a Taiwan-based researcher at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, performed another technical analysis that reached similar conclusions.
Republican Rep. Gus Bilirakis of Florida also said there is a lack of adequate content moderation, which leaves room for kids to be exposed to content that promotes self harm.Citing examples of harmful content served to children, he said,"it is unacceptable, sir, that even after knowing all these dangers, you still claim that TikTok is something grand to behold."
"You have been one of the few people to unite this committee," Cárdenas told Chew."You remind me a lot of Mark Zuckerberg. When he came here, I said to my staff, 'He reminds me of Fred Astaire — good dancer with words.' And you are doing the same today. A lot of your answers are a bit nebulous; they're not yes or no."
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