With a full ban of the app within the US looming, all the pieces might be driving on TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew’s look earlier than the US Home Committee on Vitality and Commerce this week, during which Chew could have the chance to current TikTok’s case, and persuade senators that TikTok doesn’t pose a nationwide safety menace.
However he’ll have his work minimize out for him – amid rising US/China tensions, and stories of workers from mother or father firm ByteDance stalking US journalists, in addition to revelations of retrospective consumer knowledge shops, it does appear to be TikTok is destined for sanctions, a technique or one other. Add to this the escalating considerations round China’s help for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which had been heightened once more this week when Chinese language President Xi Jinping met with Vladimir Putin in Moscow, and the indicators all level to the US making a transfer on TikTok, a technique or one other.
Whether or not that’s a pressured sell-off – which might require the approval of the CCP – or an outright ban, TikTok, proper now, feels prefer it’s on the sting.
And at present, the Home Vitality Committee has launched Shou Zi Chew’s pre-prepared testimony, which particulars the argument that Chew will current, when he stands earlier than the Senate this week.
Chew’s opening assertion focuses on the advantages that TikTok brings to the US, and particularly, the way it helps small companies. Chew additionally supplies some notes on total TikTok utilization:
“Greater than 150 million individuals in america use TikTok on a month-to-month foundation, with the typical consumer at present being an grownup nicely previous faculty age. Their movies present a lens by which the remainder of the world can expertise American tradition. Examples embody TikTok’s function in bringing publicity to American musicians, artists, cooks, and plenty of extra. Whereas customers in america signify 10 % of our international neighborhood, their voice accounts for 25 % of the whole views around the globe.”
It’s attention-grabbing to notice the typical consumer age, as per Chew’s instance right here, which is probably going older than many would count on.
Chew then outlines the important thing considerations about TikTok, as communicated to him by US officers:
- Minor security
- Knowledge privateness and safety
- Actual-world harms from on-line actions
- The chance of overseas content material manipulation
Chew then outlines TikTok’s varied efforts to supply safety for minors, and restrict publicity to dangerous traits.
However the large one is clearly knowledge privateness, and the priority that China-based workers could possibly be spying on US customers.
On this aspect, Chew supplies an outline of ‘Undertaking Texas’, which sees TikTok routing all US consumer knowledge by US-based Oracle servers.
“Undertaking Texas is an unprecedented initiative devoted to safeguarding each U.S. consumer knowledge and U.S. nationwide safety pursuits. This initiative addresses key problems with company governance, content material advice and moderation, knowledge safety, and system entry. It’s a complete package deal of measures with layers of unbiased oversight to guard towards backdoors into TikTok that could possibly be used to control the platform or entry U.S. user-protected knowledge.”
The challenge, which has already value TikTok over $1.5 billion, will finally see all US consumer knowledge saved within the US, and in response to Chew, will make sure that it’s not accessible by Chinese language workers.
“At the moment, 100% of U.S. consumer site visitors is being routed to Oracle and USDS-controlled infrastructure in america. USDS is operating our advice system for U.S. customers, which determines what seems within the For You feed, within the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Furthermore, Oracle has already begun inspecting TikTok’s supply code and could have unprecedented entry to the associated algorithms and knowledge fashions. No different social media firm, or leisure platform like TikTok, supplies this stage of entry and transparency.”
Chew additionally notes that historic US consumer knowledge saved in non-Oracle servers can be deleted later this yr.
Although as famous, TikTok’s belief on this regard has been impacted by the case of ByteDance workers spying on US journalists, by utilizing TikTok location knowledge to correlate their actions.
Chew additionally addresses this incident immediately:
“One other necessary a part of being a accountable steward of consumer knowledge is proudly owning as much as our errors and making adjustments to handle them. That’s why we promptly took motion, together with a companywide disclosure, once we discovered late final yr that sure (now former) staff had accessed TikTok consumer knowledge in an unsuccessful and misguided try and hint the supply of a leak of confidential TikTok info. We additionally notified this Committee about these ill-advised actions inside moments of informing our staff. I condemn this misconduct within the strongest potential phrases.”
In his closing arguments, Chew says that he doesn’t suppose a full ban of TikTok will resolve the problems or considerations at hand, whereas it should affect US customers.
Chew additionally pledges that TikTok is not going to share US consumer knowledge with Chinese language officers:
“TikTok has by no means shared, or obtained a request to share, U.S. consumer knowledge with the Chinese language authorities. Nor would TikTok honor such a request if one had been ever made. Certainly, a 2021 report from Citizen Lab, an internationally famend safety analysis laboratory, discovered that there was no overt knowledge transmission by TikTok to the Chinese language authorities and that TikTok didn’t contact any servers inside China.”
It’s a tough promote, given the examples of the information that TikTok has entry too, and the methods during which its workers have at the least tried to make use of such for ailing objective. However Chew can be hoping that his arguments will persuade US lawmakers to go straightforward on the app, and let it proceed to function, with these provisos in place.
Nevertheless it’ll be Chew’s responses to direct questioning that can be vital, and that would go awry rapidly. Which can not essentially even be Chew’s fault, given the previous questioning we’ve seen of social media CEOs, during which a variety of random questions can get thrown at them by politicians with various levels of understanding of tech.
Chew can be placed on the spot, and his responses would be the figuring out issue that would see TikTok minimize off from the American market.
And if the US imposes a TikTok ban, different areas will observe. It’s not a certainty {that a} ban can be imposed, however Chew’s written testimony doesn’t do quite a bit to supply new assurance.
