The future of popular social media platform TikTok in the US seems grim as the House Energy and Commerce Committee panel grilled TikTok CEO Zi Chew over harmful content, data security, and the app’s ties to China.
Tensions ran high during Thursday’s high-profile hearing as CEO Chew tried to assure members that TikTok prioritizes user safety and should not be banned in the US.
Republican Chair of the Committee Cathy McMorris Rodgers opened the hearing by saying Americans needed to know the truth about the video-sharing app and its threats to national and personal security.
Rodgers said that TikTok had repeatedly sought more control, manipulation, and surveillance.
Chew, however, disagreed with Rodgers’ take and declared that ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, was not an agent of China.
TikTok has been trying very hard to distance itself from China, but that was made more difficult after a recent report that China would oppose any attempts by the US for ByteDance to sell the app.
In a rare show of solidarity by both political parties, Democrats like Representative Frank Pallone (Dem-NJ) asked Chew about TikTok’s content moderation practices and how the company secures American data from China.
However, Rep. Pallone seems inclined not to discard the application completely.
Rep. Diana DeGette said that users were accessing the information on self-abortions while Rep. Gus Bilirakis played a few videos that seemed to encourage suicide.
According to Rep. Bilirakis, TikTok was leading to death, literally.
The parents of a TikTok user who allegedly committed suicide after seeing suicidal videos on the platform were at the hearing. Dean and Michelle Naska broke down as pro-suicide videos played on the screen.
A video of someone threatening the Energy and Commerce hearing that had stayed on the platform for 41 days was played during the hearing. It was removed from the app immediately after.
Rep. Kat Cammarck told CEO Chew that they did not believe that his company could maintain the data privacy and security of the over 150 million Americans using the app.
Rep. Rodgers called for a ban of the app, saying that TikTok was being used by the Chinese Communist Party to spy on Americans and manipulate content, all of which CEO Chew vehemently denied.
