TikTok CEO To Testify In Hearing On Data Privacy And Online Harm Reduction

TikTok CEO Shou Chew will testify in a listening to earlier than the U.S. Home Committee on Power and Commerce this Thursday, March 23, at 10:00 a.m. ET.

As CEO, Chew is accountable for TikTok’s enterprise operations and strategic choices.

The “TikTok: How Congress Can Safeguard American Information Privateness and Shield Youngsters from On-line Harms” listening to shall be streamed reside on the Power and Commerce Committee’s website.

Based on written testimony submitted by Chew, the listening to will deal with TikTok’s alleged dedication to transparency, teen security, shopper privateness, and knowledge safety.

It additionally seems to broach the subject of misconceptions in regards to the platform, reminiscent of its connection to the Chinese language authorities via its mother or father firm, ByteDance.

Chew shared a particular message with TikTok yesterday from Washington, D.C., to thank 150 million customers, 5 million companies, and seven,000 workers within the U.S. for serving to construct the TikTok neighborhood.

@tiktokOur CEO, Shou Chew, shares a particular message on behalf of your complete TikTok staff to thank our neighborhood of 150 million Individuals forward of his congressional listening to later this week.♬ original sound – TikTok

The video has obtained over 85k feedback from customers, many describing how TikTok has allowed them to work together with folks worldwide and discover unbiased information, new views, instructional content material, inspiration, and pleasure.

TikTok Updates Pointers And Affords Extra Instructional Content material

TikTok has been making important modifications to its platform to deal with many of those issues earlier than this listening to to evade a complete U.S. ban on the platform.

Beneath is an outline of some efforts by TikTok to rehab its notion earlier than the listening to.

Updated Community Guidelines – TikTok up to date neighborhood tips and shared its Neighborhood Rules to exhibit dedication to preserving the platform secure and inclusive for all customers.

For You Feed Refresh – TikTok recommends content material to customers based mostly on their engagement with content material and creators. For customers who really feel that suggestions now not align with their pursuits, TikTok launched the power to refresh the For You Web page, permitting them to obtain recent suggestions as in the event that they began a brand new account.

STEM Feed – To enhance the standard of instructional content material on TikTok, it would introduce a STEM feed for content material centered on Science, Know-how, Engineering, and Arithmetic. In contrast to the content material that seems when customers search the #STEM hashtag, TikTok says that Frequent Sense Networks and Poynter will evaluation STEM feed content material to make sure it’s secure for youthful audiences and factually correct.

This might make it extra just like the model of TikTok in China – Douyin – that promotes educational content to youthful audiences over entertaining content material.

Series Monetization – To encourage creators to create in-depth, informative content material, TikTok launched a brand new monetization program for Collection content material. Collection permits creators to earn revenue by placing as much as 80 movies with as much as 20 minutes in size, every behind a paywall.

Extra Congressional Efforts To Prohibit TikTok

The TikTok listening to tomorrow isn’t the one Congressional effort to restrict or ban applied sciences like TikTok.

Earlier this month, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) launched the RESTRICT Act (Limiting the Emergence of Safety Threats that Threat Info and Communications Know-how), which might create a proper course of for the federal government to evaluation and mitigate dangers of know-how originating in nations like China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela.

Warner launched the next assertion about tomorrow’s listening to.

“Whereas I admire Mr. Chew’s willingness to reply questions earlier than Congress, TikTok’s lack of transparency, repeated obfuscations, and misstatements of truth have severely undermined the credibility of any statements by TikTok workers, together with Mr. Chew. Congress wants to present the administration the instruments to evaluation and mitigate the harms posed by overseas know-how merchandise that come from adversarial nations. I’m proud to say that 20 senators have already signed on to the RESTRICT Act, our bipartisan laws that might just do that.”

Organizations just like the Tech Oversight Challenge have identified that Congress ought to look past TikTok and examine related dangers to nationwide safety and youthful audiences posed by different Big Tech platforms like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta.

We’ll observe tomorrow’s hearing intently – you’ll want to come again for our protection to find out how this can have an effect on customers and predict what is going to occur subsequent.

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