TikTok boss faces hearing in US Congress – and experiences “small disaster”

At a hearing before the US Congress on Thursday, the head of TikTok denied allegations of complicity with the Chinese Communist Party. Parliamentarians accused Shou Zi Chew of his company being a data espionage tool and a threat to the mental health of young people, who are particularly fond of the short-video platform.

"TikTok could be designed to minimize harm to children," said Kathy Castor, a Democratic representative on the House Energy and Trade Committee who subpoenaed Chew. "Instead, it was decided to make dependent children in the name of profit."

Her colleague Diana DeGette, who is also a Democrat, criticized the insufficient protection against user manipulation. She did not accept Chew's reference to the platform's efforts. "You just told me in general that you're investing, you're worried, you're working on it." That's not enough.

Chew reiterated that his company does not take any direction from the Chinese government regarding content. "We are committed to this committee and to all of our users that we will keep TikTok free from any form of government manipulation." Commission.

Chew also pointed to billions in investments to protect the data of 150 million US users. These would be stored in the country and protected from external access. The current app does not collect any GPS location data or biometric information. The US data previously stored in Singapore is currently being deleted. Republican committee chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers was skeptical about this in a TV interview before the meeting: "It is clear that TikTok will say everything to ensure that it is not banned in the United States."

Analyst Dan Ives from wealth manager Wedbush evaluates Chew's hearing as a "small disaster". “TikTok is now the poster child for US-China tensions. Parliamentarians have many questions to which there are not enough concrete answers.”

In Congress, 20 lawmakers and senators are backing a bipartisan initiative that would give the government the power to ban foreign technology if it threatens national security. This could clear a high hurdle for the TikTok ban that former President Donald Trump failed in 2020: courts had overturned the ban imposed by decree because it curtailed the right to freedom of expression.

According to experts, however, lawsuits must also be expected with a new law. "Restricting access to a platform used by millions of Americans every day would set a dangerous precedent for regulating our digital public in general," warned Jameel Jaffer, chief of Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute, which is committed to protecting it committed to freedom of expression.

Tiktok is under increasing political pressure because the platform belongs to the Bytedance group from China. With more than a billion users worldwide, the service is the only online platform that is also successful in the West that does not come from the USA. Last week it became known that the US government had asked Bytedance to sell its shares in TikTok or to expect the app to be banned in the United States.

Ahead of Thursday's hearing, the Chinese government said it would "strongly oppose" any sale of the app. Forcing such a transaction would "seriously undermine the confidence of investors from various countries, including China, in the United States," the New York Times quoted a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Commerce in Beijing as saying.

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Germany also sees considerable risks in using TikTok. “If you look at the amount of data, metadata and content on TikTok on the one hand, and if you then also look at the possibilities for government agencies to influence such companies, then it can only give you a headache. And I have it," said the vice president of the domestic intelligence service, Sinan Selen, in Berlin. "We're not clear enough on the extent of what government agencies can access, especially in China -- I think that's the core issue of the whole thing."

Interior Minister Faeser (SPD) said during a visit to Washington that she did not see any general ban on the app in Germany. However, you have to explain more about the fact that TikTok is a company where "the data can of course leak".