TikTok CEO to insist to Congress it’s ‘inaccurate’ to suppose its ‘beholden to the Chinese language authorities’

Shou Zi Chew is because of reply questions Thursday from U.S. lawmakers involved in regards to the social media platform’s results on its younger consumer base and attainable nationwide safety dangers posed by the favored app, which was based by Chinese language entrepreneurs.

Chew is sticking to a well-recognized script as he urges officers towards pursuing an all-out ban on TikTok or for the corporate to be offered off to new homeowners.

TikTok’s efforts to make sure the safety of its customers’ information, together with a $1.5 billion mission to retailer the knowledge on Oracle servers within the U.S. and permit outdoors displays to examine its supply code, go “above and past” what any of its rivals are doing, in accordance with Chew’s ready remarks launched forward of his look earlier than the U.S. Home Committee on Power and Commerce.

“No different social media firm, or leisure platform like TikTok, offers this stage of entry and transparency,” he stated.

Chew pushed again towards fears that TikTok might turn into a software of China’s ruling Communist Get together as a result of its father or mother firm, ByteDance, is predicated in Beijing.

“Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance just isn’t an agent of China or another nation,” Chew stated.

He distanced TikTok from its Chinese language roots and denied the “inaccurate” perception that TikTok’s company construction makes it “beholden to the Chinese language authorities.” ByteDance has advanced right into a privately held “international enterprise,” Chew stated, with 60% owned by massive institutional traders, 20% owned by the Chinese language entrepreneurs who based it and the remainder by staff.

It’s “emphatically unfaithful” that TikTok sends information on its American customers to Beijing, he stated.

“TikTok has by no means shared, or obtained a request to share, U.S. consumer information with the Chinese language authorities,” Chew stated. “Nor would TikTok honor such a request if one have been ever made.”

TikTok has come below fireplace within the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific, the place a rising variety of governments have banned the app from units used for official enterprise over worries it poses dangers to cybersecurity and information privateness or might be used to push pro-Beijing narratives and misinformation.

Chew, a 40-year-old Singaporean who was appointed CEO in 2021, stated in a TikTok video this week that the congressional listening to comes at a “pivotal second” for the corporate, which now has 150 million American customers.

U.S. regulators have reportedly threatened to ban TikTok until the Chinese language homeowners promote their stake. Lawmakers have launched measures that will increase the Biden administration’s authority to enact a nationwide ban and known as for “structural restrictions” between TikTok’s American operations and ByteDance, together with probably separating the businesses.

Chew stated TikTok’s information safety mission, dubbed Challenge Texas, is the correct reply, not a ban or a sale of the corporate.

The corporate began deleting the historic protected information of U.S. customers from non-Oracle servers this month, Chew stated. When that course of is accomplished later this 12 months, all U.S. information shall be protected by American legislation and managed by a U.S.-led safety crew.

“Underneath this construction, there is no such thing as a manner for the Chinese language authorities to entry it or compel entry to it,” he stated.

He stated a TikTok ban would damage the U.S. economic system and small American companies that use the app to promote their merchandise, whereas lowering competitors in an “more and more concentrated market.” He added {that a} sale “wouldn’t impose any new restrictions on information flows or entry.”