But will he kick things off with a viral dance routine?
Bryan van der Beek/Bloomberg via Getty Images
With increasing calls from US lawmakers to ban TikTok over national security concerns, the app’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, will travel to Capitol Hill on March 23 to testify before members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Related: How Brands Capitalize on TikTok to Win New Audiences
Prior to testifying, Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Washington) mention Concerns from Lawmakers: “TikTok, owned by ByteDance, knowingly gave the Chinese Communist Party the ability to access US user data.” Rodgers continued, “Americans deserve to know how these actions affect their privacy and data security, and what actions TikTok is taking to protect our children from online and offline harm.”
The company fired back at Rodgers, releasing a statement that read in part: “There is no truth to Rep. McMorris Rodgers’ claim that TikTok made available US user data to the Chinese Communist Party,” adding: “The Chinese Communist Party has neither direct nor indirect control over ByteDance or TikTok.”
Related: Did #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt Give Amazon the ‘Social Commerce’ Push It Needed?
Last December, US lawmakers passed a bipartisan bill that contained a provision prohibiting the use of TikTok on government-owned devices (excluding its use for law enforcement or national security purposes). That followed a warning from FBI Director Christopher Wray to members of the House Homeland Security Committee in November. “We have national security concerns, at least on the part of the FBI, about TikTok,” Wray explained. “They include the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to control the data collection of millions of users. Or to control the recommendation algorithm, which can be used for influence operations if desired. Or to control software on millions of devices, what gives it an opportunity to potentially technically compromise personal devices.”
Related: Twitter mourns the loss of 97-year-old TikTok star grandma Holla
Buzz news released a bombshell report in June analyzing leaked audio clips of internal TikTok meetings. In the clips, Buzzfeed reported that ByteDance employees repeatedly spoke of accessing non-public data on US TikTok users and referred to a Chinese engineer named “Master Admin” who “has access to everything.”
But this could all be a lot of ado about nothing, right? We mean, TikTok is so much fun! Anyone want to watch a video of a chipmunk that looks like it’s bobbing its head at Migos?
