US legislators relentlessly grilled TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew on Thursday on the video-sharing app’s suspected ties to China and the risk it poses to teenagers. Chew responded to “concerns about the possibility of unauthorized foreign access to US data” after being subjected to intensive questioning from Democrats and Republicans. He said that the company has addressed the concerns with “real action” for the past two years and that TikTok has “legacy” US data which will be deleted this year.
“We have legacy US data sitting in our servers in Virginia and in Singapore. We’re deleting those and we expect that to be complete this year,” he said during the morning session of the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing.
TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is not owned or controlled by the Chinese government: Chew
He added that “when that is done, all protected US data will be under the protection of US law and under the control of the US-led security team. This eliminates the concern that some of you have shared with me that TikTok user data can be subject to Chinese law.”
The hearing takes place as TikTok tries to withstand a White House directive that the app must separate from its Chinese owners in order to avoid being banned in the United States.
ByteDance, the parent firm of TikTok, is a private corporation that “is not owned or controlled by the Chinese government,” according to Chew.
The demand that “TikTok needs to be an American company with American values and end all ties to the Chinese Communist Party” was reiterated by Democratic Congressman Darren Soto.
A ban on TikTok, which has 150 million users in the US, would be an “unprecedented act” by the US government against a media corporation.
The firm, however, is still hoping to placate the authorities with its complex “Project Texas” plan, which it says will allay concerns about national security by ring-fencing the management of US data into a US-run subsidiary. However, lawmakers expressed grave skepticism and emphasized the need for the application to cut its ties to China.