TikTok chief to look earlier than congressional panel 

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will seem in March earlier than the Home Power and Commerce Committee as lawmakers push to look at the video-sharing app’s ties to China and its client information privateness and safety practices.  

Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) stated calling the TikTok chief to testify is a part of the panel’s purpose of “asking Huge Tech CEOs — from Fb to Twitter to Google — to reply for his or her firms’ actions.” 

The social media app TikTok, which is owned by China-based dad or mum firm ByteDance, “has knowingly allowed the power for the Chinese language Communist Celebration to entry American person information,” Rodgers stated.  

“Individuals should understand how these actions affect their privateness and information safety, in addition to what actions TikTok is taking to maintain our youngsters protected from on-line and offline harms,” she added. “It’s now time to proceed the committee’s efforts to carry Huge Tech accountable by bringing TikTok earlier than the committee to offer full and sincere solutions for folks.”

Chew is about to testify earlier than the total committee at a March 23 listening to in his first look earlier than Congress. He’ll discuss “TikTok’s client privateness and information safety practices, the platforms’ affect on children, and their relationship with the Chinese language Communist Celebration,” in response to the committee. 

A TikTok spokesperson advised The Hill that the corporate sees Chew’s congressional committee look as an “alternative to set the file straight” and discuss its safety plans, including that “there isn’t a fact” to Rodgers’ declare that TikTok person information might be out there to the Chinese language Communist Celebration.

“The Chinese language Communist Celebration has neither direct nor oblique management of ByteDance or TikTok. Furthermore, underneath the proposal we now have devised with our nation’s high nationwide safety businesses via CFIUS, that sort of information sharing—or every other type of overseas affect over the TikTok platform in the USA—wouldn’t be potential,” the spokesperson stated.

The app, which boasts greater than 85 million customers within the U.S. alone, has been banned on federal and plenty of state authorities units, because of considerations about its privateness and safety.  

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) final week launched a invoice to ban the TikTok from being downloaded on any U.S. machine. 

Predominantly utilized by youthful Individuals, TikTok can be underneath scrutiny because of considerations about youngsters’s privateness and the potential affect of the Chinese language Communist Celebration in reaching youngsters on the app.  

Up to date at 12:18 p.m.