The executive director of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, warned US congressmen this Thursday (23) that imposing a veto on this platform in the country would be harmful to freedom of expression and the economy of the United States.
“It’s an app where people can be creative. There are about five million American businesses, most of them small, that use it to find customers and drive growth,” Chew told the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, and recalled that in the US there are about 150 million users.
Chew has met with some lawmakers bilaterally this year to emphasize that the company offers privacy and security guarantees, but this was his first official address on Capitol Hill.
The administrative direction of Congress has already vetoed the download and use of TikTok on all government mobile devices and in January and March several bills were presented that seek to prohibit it throughout the country and limit the threat posed by the technology coming from ” enemies” like China and Iran.
In this regard, Chew pointed out that he is a Singaporean and a resident of Singapore, that TikTok is managed by an executive team in the United States and Singapore, that it is based in Los Angeles and Singapore, and that it is not available in the mainland of China.
However, he said he was aware that the fact that its parent company, ByteDance, had Chinese founders raised suspicions about whether the platform could be used or become a tool of China or the Chinese Communist Party.
“ByteDance is not owned or controlled by the Chinese government. It is a private company. I have no evidence that the Chinese Executive has access to the data. They never asked us,” he guaranteed.
In his attempt to dispel doubts, he also wanted to make it clear that his company is subject to US law.
To ensure that Americans’ data is stored in the US and hosted by a company headquartered in that country, he pointed out that they hired Oracle, a leader in cloud-based services, and only the team of a new unit of the company, TikTok US Data Security, can access this data.
“By the way, this goes further than any other company in our industry has ever done. We are the only one, the only one, that offers this level of transparency”, assured Chew in a session surrounded by much expectation among both lawmakers and the press. .
A session also in which the opposition of the parliamentarians was clear from the beginning.
“We don’t believe that TikTok will ever embrace American values. The platform should be banned. Many of its employees still report directly to Beijing. We don’t believe their arguments,” said Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy, a Republican. McMorris Rodgers.
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