Last updated: January 30, 2023, 7:22 PM IST
TikTok is getting more attention in the US
TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew will appear before the US Energy and Trade Committee in March as lawmakers scrutinize China’s video-sharing app.
WASHINGTON: TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew will appear before the US Energy and Commerce Committee in March as lawmakers scrutinize the Chinese-owned video-sharing app.
Chew will testify before the committee on March 23, which will be his first appearance before a congressional committee, Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the panel’s Republican chairman, said in a statement Monday.
The news comes as the House Foreign Affairs Committee plans to vote next month on a bill designed to block the use of TikTok in the United States over national security concerns.
“TikTok, owned by ByteDance, has knowingly given the Chinese Communist Party the ability to access US user data,” said McMorris Rodgers, adding that Americans deserve to know how these actions affect their privacy and data security.
TikTok confirmed on Monday that Chew will testify.
TikTok said on Friday “calls for a total ban on TikTok, a piecemeal approach to national security, and a piecemeal approach to broad industry issues such as data security, privacy and online harm.”
McMorris Rodgers and other Republican lawmakers have demanded more information from TikTok. They want to know the impact on young people amid concerns about harmful content, and they want additional details about potential sexual exploitation of minors on the platform, the statement said.
For three years now, TikTok — which has more than 100 million U.S. users — has been trying to assure Washington that the personal data of U.S. citizens is inaccessible and that its content cannot be manipulated by the Chinese Communist Party or anyone else under Beijing’s influence .
The US government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a powerful national security agency, ordered ByteDance to divest TikTok in 2020 over fears that US user data could be passed on to the Chinese government.
CFIUS and TikTok have been in talks for more than two years to reach a national security agreement to protect the data of US TikTok users.
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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and was published from a syndicated news agency feed)
