TikTok’s chief executive, Shou Zi Chew, will be questioned by lawmakers in Washington on Thursday with the app’s US future in severe doubt. The Biden administration wants TikTok’s Chinese owners to sell their stakes in the business or face a complete ban in the US. TikTok is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance.
TikTok says such a move would not “solve the problem”. Under a plan dubbed Project Texas, which the White House now appears to have rejected, TikTok is moving its US user data to third-party servers and is allowing its source code to be scrutinised by Oracle, a US tech firm which will also vet its app updates.
For the White House and many US lawmakers, this does not go far enough to answer concerns about whether TikTok’s data, from more than 1 billion users, can be accessed by the Chinese state and whether TikTok’s recommendation algorithm could be manipulated by the security services in order to influence what users see.
Here are some the questions that Chew, a Singaporean former Goldman Sachs banker, could be asked at the House energy and commerce committee hearing, which starts at 10am ET on Thursday.
Has the Chinese government ever sought to access TikTok user data?
The regular answer to this question by TikTok is no. “TikTok has never shared, or received a request to share, US user data with the Chinese government. Nor would TikTok honor such a request,” Chew will say on Thursday, according to written testimony released by the committee. Indeed, the energy and commerce committee’s press release states that as well as asking Chew about TikTok’s privacy and data security practices, it will ask him about TikTok’s “relationship with the Chinese Communist Party”.
Suspicions about the use of TikTok data, which critics say could be used to create profiles of people of interest like government employees, centre on Chinese security laws. These include the National Intelligence Law of 2017, which states that all organisations and citizens shall “support, assist and cooperate” with national intelligence efforts. The shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon off the east coast of the US in February has not helped. Trust was also severely damaged last year by revelations that ByteDance employees had used TikTok to spy on reporters.
Will TikTok shed its Chinese ownership?
TikTok says the Biden administration has asked its Chinese owners to sell their stakes in the business. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, which is located in Beijing and its ownership is divided thus: 60% by external investors including KKR, the US private equity firm; 20% by employees and 20% by its founders, Zhang Yiming and Liang Rubo, who carry stronger voting rights than the other shareholders.
TikTok points to the fact that its US user data is stored on Oracle servers but the only option now appears to be a sale, which could raise about $50bn. However, the Chinese government could object to a deal that would put a prized tech asset in foreign hands, including TikTok’s successful recommendation algorithm. When Donald Trump tried to ban TikTok, and sell control of its US operation, he was stymied by legal action brought by the app and we can expect any renewed attempt at a ban to end up in court.
Can the Toutiao app interfere with TikTok data flows?
A former TikTok risk manager turned whistleblower has told congressional investigators that the Project Texas plan is deeply flawed. The former employee has shown the Washington Post a piece of code that shows TikTok could connect with systems linked to Toutiao, a Chinese news app owned by ByteDance. The whistleblower claims this could allow for interference in the flow of data from US users. TikTok says the Toutiao code does not link back to China.
The whistleblower claims he was fired after warning Chew in a letter that senior TikTok managers were “intentionally lying” to US government officials about how the Project Texas controls had been tested and verified.
Are US data controls much weaker than the company says they are?
Another TikTok whistleblower has told the office of the Republican senator Josh Hawley that TikTok’s access controls on US user data are much weaker than the company says. According to a report by Axios, the whistleblower allegations suggest that TikTok overstates its separation from ByteDance and uses Chinese software that could have backdoors. In a letter to the US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, Hawley details the whistleblower allegations including a claim that TikTok and ByteDance employees can switch between Chinese and US data at the click of a button.
TikTok says the whistleblower allegations describe tools that are “primarily analytic tools” that don’t independently grant direct access to data. It adds that neither TikTok nor ByteDance engineers have access to US user data stored by Oracle.
Can Project Texas answer lawmakers’ concerns about TikTok?
The committee on foreign investment in the US, a multiagency taskforce that scrutinises foreign investments in American companies, is so unconvinced by the Texas proposals that it has demanded TikTok shed its Chinese ownership. But aside from taking the Biden administration to court, it is the only option that TikTok has. Alongside Oracle storing US user data, the Texas proposals include Oracle looking at TikTok’s source code and vetting its app updates, Chew will argue that Project Texas, and not a sale process, is the answer to lawmakers’ concerns.
“The idea behind Project Texas is it won’t matter what the Chinese law or any law says, because we’re taking US user data and we’re putting it out of their reach,” Chew told the Wall Street Journal last week.
What is TikTok doing to protect children from harmful content?
The committee chair, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, says tech companies like TikTok use “harmful algorithms to exploit children for profit and expose them to dangerous content online”. So although data security will feature strongly in the hearing, expect questions about the protection of children online. TikTok has over 1 billion users worldwide and more than 100 million in the US, many of them under 18. According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, TikTok’s recommendation algorithm pushes self-harm and eating disorder content to teenagers within minutes of them expressing interest in the topics.
TikTok announced a “comprehensive” update to its content guidelines this month, including placing age restrictions on “mature content” such as videos of cosmetic surgery. It will also make content that is inappropriate for a “broader audience” ineligible for recommendation in its main For You feed. Expect Chew to refer to these guideline updates.
