TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will appear before the U.S. Congress on March 23. The reason? He will have to answer questions about the security of U.S. users, reports The Wall Street Journal.
The Energy and Commerce Committee definitively confirmed the appearance last Monday through a press release. Vanessa Pappas (TikTok’s COO) already testified in September, but now it will be the first time that the company’s CEO will be brought to Capitol Hill for questioning.
Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, said in a statement that “big tech is becoming a destructive force in American society. The Energy and Commerce Committee has been at the forefront of holding the CEOs of big companies (Facebook, Twitter, Google) accountable for the actions of their companies […] these efforts will continue with TikTok. This app, owned by ByteDance, has allowed the Chinese Communist Party to access U.S. user data.”
On the other hand, TikTok has been negotiating with the Committee on Foreign Investment to allow its app to continue operating within the United States. However, since December these talks have remained stalled and without any agreement at the forefront.
TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter has responded to Rodgers and clarifies that “the Chinese Communist Party has no direct or indirect control over ByteDance or TikTok. Moreover, under the proposal we have devised with the major national security agencies […] this type of data sharing would not be possible.”
TikTok, the social network that is taking everything by storm
TikTok has become one of the most used social networks in the world and its growth seems to be endless. According to data found in Statista, the number of monthly active users will continue to grow and is expected to reach 955.3 million worldwide by 2025. Despite being a relatively “new” application, it has managed to capture the attention of millions of young people. During March 2020, people between the ages of 10 and 19 accounted for nearly a quarter of all active accounts in the United States.
