TikTok CEO, Shou Zi Chew, testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee regarding concerns over data collection and the ability to influence consumer information, as the company faces a potential ban in the US. The hearing raises existential questions for US regulators on how to regulate technology, as lawmakers recognise that these concerns are not exclusive to TikTok. The US government has banned the app on government devices and the interagency panel has threatened a ban if ByteDance doesn’t sell its stake in the app. While some lawmakers are calling for privacy reform, it’s acknowledged that many of the concerns apply to other social media platforms.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee while the company faced a potential ban in the US over concerns about data collection and the ability to influence what information consumers see. However, the hearing also raised existential questions for the US government regarding how it regulates technology. Lawmakers recognize that the concerns over broad data collection and the ability to influence what information consumers see extend far beyond TikTok alone. U.S. tech platforms including Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Google’s YouTube, Twitter, and Snap’s Snapchat have raised similar fears for lawmakers and users.
There is little appetite in Washington to accept the potential risks that TikTok’s ownership by Chinese company ByteDance poses to U.S. national security. Congress has already banned the app on government devices and some states have made similar moves. The interagency panel tasked with reviewing national security risks stemming from ByteDance’s ownership has threatened a ban if the company won’t sell its stake in the app.
If the government moves for a ban where the concerns could reasonably be mitigated with a less restrictive measure, it could pose First Amendment issues, according to Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. Even if the US successfully bans TikTok or forces it to spin off from ByteDance, there’s no way to know for sure that any data collected earlier is out of reach of the Chinese government.
Thursday’s hearing featured several lawmakers on both sides of the aisle calling for comprehensive privacy reform, like the kind the panel passed last year but which never made it to the floor for a vote. Those calls serve as recognition that many of the concerns about TikTok, apart from its Chinese ownership, apply to other social media platforms.
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