TikTok’s CEO Interrogated Over Data Privacy
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The CEO of TikTok Shou Zi Chew faced strong questioning about the social media app’s privacy from US legislators for more than five hours last week, about whether China has used the app to spy on American users. The questions came from combative US lawmakers on both ends of the political spectrum over the video-sharing app's alleged ties to China and its potential danger to teenagers.
TikTok has of millions of US users, and lawmakers have long held concerns over China’s control over the app. In particular, US Congress members expressed concerns about child safety on the app, asked for more parental controls and more comprehensive privacy legislation.
The hearing marked the first ever appearance before US lawmakers by a TikTok chief executive, and a rare public outing for the 4o-year-old Chew, who has remained largely out of the limelight as the social network’s popularity soars.
When Rep. Neal Dunn asked Chew whether Bytedance, TikTok’s China-based parent company, “has spied on Americans at the direction of the Chinese Communist Party,” Chew said “no.” Mr Chew went on “Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country,”
Dunn also mentioned a newspaper report published in October 2022, that focused on ByteDance’s plans to monitor the physical locations of some US TikTok users. “I don't think that ‘spying’ is the right way to describe it. This is ultimately an internal investigation,” Chew said.
The popular short-form video app has been in the lawmakers’ focus for years as it was possible that TikTok’s data could be accessed by ByteDance and then by the Chinese government.
Chew was interrogators by included Rep. John Joyce, who asked about data security and TikTok’s plan to delete data rather than just move it from one server to another. “You have publicly stated that the nonpublic information of TikTok users in the United States is being transferred to an Oracle-based cloud infrastructure because of safety concerns…What’s the outline for dealing with that data that you’ve already amassed?” To which Mr Chew replied “All new data is already stored by default in this Oracle Cloud infrastructure" adding that the effort to move older data should be finished later this year.
When pressed that TikTok only began planning to delete data after Congress asked about it earlier this month, Chew said TikTok hired a third-party auditor to help with the process and defended the company’s actions: “Congressman, respectfully, there are many companies that use a global workforce. We are not the only one.”
The CEO Chew said TikTok started deleting “historical protected U.S. user data stored in non-Oracle servers” in March and “we expect this process to be completed later this year.”
These events may culminate in a long predicted and much delayed move by US legislators to regulate the social media platform and it is possible the TikTok’s days may be required to withdraw for the US market.
US Congress: DefenseOne: Forbes: Le Monde: You Tube: CNBC: Guardian: Platformer:
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