Lawmakers Blast TikTok’s CEO for App’s Ties to China, Escalating Tensions

Lawmakers remained skeptical. Several brought up China’s declaration that it would oppose TikTok’s sale, saying it was evidence of the country’s influence over the company. They cited reports of ByteDance’s surveillance of American journalists as proof of the company’s abuse of privacy and user security. In December, ByteDance said that its China-based employees had retrieved the sensitive data of U.S. TikTok users, including reporters, to try to find who was leaking internal information to journalists.

“I’m not convinced that the benefits outweigh the risks that it poses to Americans in its present form,” Frank Pallone, the ranking Democrat of New Jersey, said of TikTok. “The combination of TikTok’s Beijing communist-based China ownership and its popularity exacerbates its danger to our country and to our privacy.”

Concerns over TikTok increased during the Trump administration. In 2020, President Donald J. Trump tried, unsuccessfully, to ban TikTok from Apple’s and Google’s app stores unless it was sold to an American buyer. A deal to sell stakes in the app to Oracle and Walmart never came together.

After the Biden administration came into office, it initially focused on negotiating the security deal that would allow TikTok to keep operating in the United States. That changed in recent weeks with the White House’s demand that TikTok’s Chinese owners sell the app. The administration also backed a new bill, sponsored by Senators Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, and John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, that would give it more power to ban TikTok.

Mr. Chew, who was appointed TikTok’s chief executive in May 2021, has in recent months embarked on a charm offensive in Washington, meeting with lawmakers, think tank leaders and journalists. This week, he tried garnering support with a video on TikTok’s official account, warning users that politicians “could take TikTok away from all 150 million of you.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/23/technology/tiktok-hearing-congress-china.html