On March 23, Shou Zi Chew, who took over as TikTok CEO in April 2021, will testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, according to US media.
“We’ve made our concerns clear with TikTok. It is now time to continue the committee’s efforts to hold Big Tech accountable by bringing TikTok before the committee to provide complete and honest answers for people,” the committee’s chair, Republican Cathy McMorris Rodgers said in a statement as quoted by US media.
This will be Shou Zi Chew’s first appearance before a congressional committee.
US officials have raised concerns that China could abuse the app to harvest Americans' personal data, manipulate the content they watch or use it for intelligence.
In turn, Chew said that TikTok was already in compliance with securing US user data and done all steps for locking down that data together with two major US companies. According to him, TikTok has been working confidentially with the US government to secure data.
Earlier, TikTok said that “calls for total bans of TikTok take a piecemeal approach to national security and a piecemeal approach to broad industry issues like data security, privacy, and online harms.”
In December 2022, Joe Biden signed a bill into law restricting the use of TikTok on federal government devices. Currently, the US states of Pennsylvania, Kansas, Louisiana, West Virginia, Montana, Virginia, Georgia, New Hampshire, Idaho, North Dakota, Iowa, Alabama, Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, South Carolina, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Florida have banned TikTok from use on state-owned electronic devices due to national security concerns.
The previous US administration attempted to ban Chinese social platforms TikTok and WeChat in 2020 in order to protect Americans’ privacy. The Biden administration has not pursued its predecessor's initiative. However, recently, accusations against the company have started to reappear.
TikTok has at least 100 million users in the United States.