TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, who testified in front of the US Congress for the first time, stated that the short-video platform will never share US user data with China.
Chew expressed reassurance that the business will improve privacy and prevent any potential of “unauthorised foreign access” to American user data when he testified late on Thursday before dozens of members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, citing to TechCrunch.
“I understand that there are concerns stemming from the inaccurate belief that TikTok’s corporate structure makes it beholden to the Chinese government or that it shares information about US users with the Chinese government,” Chew said.
“This is emphatically untrue,” he told the committee members.
“Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country,” Chew stressed.
Chew had previously warned the 150 million US users of TikTok about the ban in a video.
“Some politicians have started talking about banning TikTok,” Chew said. “Now this could take TikTok away from all 150 million of you.”
Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers stated during the hearing that Americans “deserve to know to what extent their privacy is jeopardised and that their data is being manipulated by ByteDance-owned TikTok’s relationship with China.”
What’s worse is that, as per Rodgers, “Big Tech businesses, like TikTok, use harmful algorithms to exploit children for profit and expose them to dangerous content online.”
The committee also grilled Chew regarding actions that TikTok is taking to protect minors on the service.
The Joe Biden administration has reportedly demanded that China-based ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, to sell its ownership in the short-video creating app or face a possible ban.
A group of 12 US Senators has introduced a new bill that now has White House support and could give President Biden the authority to ban TikTok nationwide.
