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It has been a familiar, albeit predictable, script for years: Outraged congressional members raise their voices and wag their fingers at cowed tech executives, who promise to look into their business practices and/or algorithms and do better in the immediate future.
Nothing much changed. Until the next congressional grilling, which typically led to even more angst.
But by the time embattled TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew concluded a grueling five hours on the stand before a bipartisan House committee Thursday, this time felt different.
It took years and more than 30 Big Tech-related hearings, but a more tech-savvy and united committee mercilessly peppered Chew with technical questions focused on TikTok’s impact on millions of Americans and its ties to China. They asked probing questions, cited a wide swath of news reports and investigations, and presented devastating videos that illustrated destructive information available on the video-sharing app.
“TikTok is the spy in Americans’ pockets,” Rep. John Joyce, R-Pa., said, alluding to the 150 million Americans who use the mobile app.
There was a sharp difference from when Facebook executives testified in 2018 after the Cambridge Analytica debacle. “What a far cry from the Facebook hearings five years ago in terms of the technical knowledge of lawmakers,” said Lindsay Gorman, senior fellow for emerging technologies at the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy. “These guys and gals know just as much as the CEO.”
Rather than struggle with basic concepts, as some of their predecessors have in recent years, the House Energy and Commerce Committee posed technical questions such as coding for Project Texas, a technology partnership with Oracle Corp.
ORCL,
designed to instill American confidence in TikTok’s operations and security. Others pointed to a weeks-old death threat on TikTok against committee chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash.
The hearing comes at a time of heightened tensions between the U.S. and China, and amid a flurry of legislation that is much more likely to gain traction than the antitrust bills that fizzled after countless hearings over the past three years. Over the past year, the Biden administration has announced sweeping new restrictions designed to curb China’s access to advanced technology as well as efforts to force TikTok’s sale from China-based parent company ByteDance Ltd. The federal government already bans its employees from installing the app on official devices.
Not everyone is siding with the government, however. Americans remain split in opinion polls on banning TikTok, and widespread sentiment online is that all companies operating in the U.S., including TikTok, should be subject to tough federal privacy laws but not an outright ban. Many interpreted hostilities toward TikTok as a national security overreach and unease over a Chinese company with a dominant social media platform.
“The day was dominated by political grandstanding that failed to acknowledge the real solutions already underway through Project Texas or productively address industry-wide issues of youth safety,” TikTok said in a statement.
In the days leading up to Thursday’s showdown on Capitol Hill, TikTok put on a full-court PR press. The company released Chew’s statement more than 24 hours before his testimony after he filmed a short video with the Capitol in the background. Additionally, it placed ads in the Washington Post and at metro stations in the D.C. area. Before Thursday’s hearing, TikTok supporters rallied on Capitol Hill as ByteDance ramps up lobbying spending in Washington.
Five years ago, during the heat of congressional hearings over its outsized influence in the 2016 presidential election, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg effectively bobbed and weaved his way through testimony through superior tech knowledge and some rudimentary debating skills.
Chew’s attempt at Zucking the committee with promises to “get back to you” and “we’ll look into it” clearly did not work.
“You remind me a lot of Mike (sic) Zuckerberg … when he came here I said to my staff, ‘he reminds me of Fred Astaire, good dancer with words,’ and you are doing the same today. A lot of your answers are a bit nebulous. They’re not ‘yes or no,’” Rep. Tony Cardenas, D-Calif., said.
“Welcome, sir, to the most bipartisan committee in Congress,” Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., said to Chew.
Another committee member invoked a comparison that stuck to Facebook following its multiple hearing appearances over the years, with Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., likening TikTok to “Big Tobacco.”
Indeed, Chew’s at-times-evasive performance played into the narrative of lawmakers, who portrayed TikTok as a nefarious front for the Chinese Communist Party.
“We would characterize today’s testimony … as a ‘disaster’ moment that will likely catalyze more calls by lawmakers and the White House to look to ban TikTok within the U.S. if the company does not look to spin off and force a sale from Chinese parent ByteDance,” Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives wrote in a note Thursday.
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