Improving the Security of a U.S. Social Media Application with the Proposed Anti-Tikik-Tok Approval

The bottom line is that American data is stored by an American company in America, overseen by American personnel. “Today, U.S. TikTok data is stored by default in Oracle’s servers. Only people who have undergone vetting can access the data in TikTok U.S. Data Security.

Despite these initiatives, momentum to ban the app has only grown following revelations that ByteDance employees have repeatedly accessed the data of US users over the last few years.

The announcement comes weeks after Republicans officially took over as the majority party in the House. They’ve wasted little time ramping up scrutiny of the Chinese-owned app that touts over 80 million monthly active users in the US, citing its potential risk to national security.

The proposed legislation would “block and prohibit all transactions” in the United States by social media companies with at least one million monthly users that are based in, or under the “substantial influence” of, countries that are considered foreign adversaries, including China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela.

In a statement, TikTok spokesman Jamal Brown said: “A U.S. ban on TikTok could have a direct impact on the livelihoods of millions of Americans. People whose decisions would have a direct affect on their lives should be heard by Washington lawmakers.

This is not an issue of race. All global companies face common challenges that need to be addressed through safeguards and transparency. The leader in this area is TikTok, and I would like to have more conversations with the US government to make this model even better.

“The agreement under review by CFIUS will meaningfully address any security concerns that have been raised at both the federal and state level,” Oberwetter said. “These plans have been developed under the oversight of our country’s top national security agencies—plans that we are well underway in implementing—to further secure our platform in the United States, and we will continue to brief lawmakers on them.”

On the Origins of Location Tracking: The Rise of TikTok and the Rise of Celestial Hip-Hop in the Chinese Media Landscape

A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.

Many of the lawmakers’ concerns have to do with location tracking services within the app, which they fear could be used for espionage. When it comes to social media apps, location tracking is a standard feature.

The bill would give exceptions for “law enforcement activities, national security interests and activities, and security researchers.”

“I do think TikTok’s strongest argument to date is drawing on its creator user base,” Gorman said. But for some lawmakers with security concerns, the latest push “may be too little too late.”

The administration’s contradictory approach to TikTok — its embrace of the app as a vital conduit to the public, and its fear of the app as a potential tool of foreign influence — is perhaps a fitting response to the utterly unique problem that TikTok poses. Seemingly overnight, TikTok has managed to remake American culture both low and high, from media and music to memes and celebrity, in its own image. TikTok turned Olivia Rodrigo into a household name and propelled the author Colleen Hoover to the top of the best-seller list, with more copies sold this year than the Bible. TikTok introduced a new dialect of algospeak, called “seggs,” that is now spreading across pop culture. Corporations and brands, from Goldfish crackers to Prada, have redirected billions of dollars worth of advertising to the platform in recognition of its all-encompassing reach, which can, at seemingly any moment, turn even a decades-old product into a must-have item. Last year, TikTok had more site visits than Google, and more watch minutes in the United States than YouTube. It took Facebook nine years to reach a billion users, compared to five for TikTok.

Trudeau told CNN that the Chinese government uses all sorts of tools to get information and data that is useful to its aims around the world. Chinese owned or Chinese directed companies are very well known and answerable to the Communist Party of China.

The TikTok Data Security Pandemic: What Is Supposed to Happen to ByteDance? A View from the House Committee on Tuesday

So the ban on federal government devices is an incremental restriction: Most drastic measures have not advanced, since the efforts lacked the political will, or courts intervened to stop them.

Yet the panic about TikTok is overblown. While some data concerns exist—though none more extreme than those over any US-based social media platforms—policies and discourse around TikTok in politics amount to a modern-day Red Scare. The politicians in the US seem to be more interested in blaming China for having a lack of data security than they are in attempting to regulate social media. Without a ban on TikTok throughout the United States, it is very difficult to put the app back in the box. These TikTok bans will harm good media citizens in college classrooms.

According to written testimony released by the House committees on Tuesday night, ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country.

“While social media companies are certainly harvesting all kinds of data about users, I think it’s usually overblown to what extent they ‘know’ about users on an individual level,” he said.

Against this backdrop, national security concerns about TikTok are justified. ByteDance, like any other Chinese company, is subject to laws that compel extreme compliance with the interests and dictums of the state. There is no First Amendment or independent judiciary that will protect ByteDance executives if they deny China’s requests. Taking direct action against CEOs of China’s wealthiest and most powerful companies has been made clear by the President.

The committee is satisfied with the steps TikTok has taken to make sure there is no chance of data getting into the hands of the Chinese government.

CFIUS deliberations are famously secretive and happen behind closed doors. It is not clear when the committee might finish its investigation, nor is it known which way it is leaning.

The telecommunications app “TikTok” is a global threat, and it is time to ban it, not just for good

Canada and the European Commission both have banned the app on official devices because of concerns over the app’s security.

This is in part because Byte Dance is required by Chinese law to assist the government, which could include sharing user data from anywhere in the world.

“There is not more time to waste on meaningless talks with the company that sells puppies,” he said. “It is time to ban Beijing-controlled TikTok for good.”

“For U.S. soldiers to be told, ‘Hey, don’t use the app because it may share your location data with other entities’, makes sense,” he said. “But that’s also true of the weather app and then lots of other apps that are existing in your phone, whether they’re owned by China or not.”

A federal privacy law would also discourage mobile phone networks, adtech companies and data brokers from selling the exact kinds of data that TikTok could provide to the Chinese authorities. It should also apply to American companies that sell data internationally or to US intelligence services.

TikTok is the greatest threat that everyone is talking about today, because it could provide a platform for the Chinese Communist Party to monitor and/or spread influence in the US. Warner said Tuesday that before TikTok, it was the other companies who threatened our nation’s telecommunications networks. “We need a comprehensive, risk-based approach that proactively tackles sources of potentially dangerous technology before they gain a foothold in America, so we aren’t playing Whac-A-Mole and scrambling to catch up once they’re already ubiquitous.”

” It’s easy to say a foreign government is a threat, and you also want to protect yourself from that foreign government,” he says. I think that we should be a little cautious about how that can be politicized in a way that far exceeds the threat to achieve political ends.

The US Congress Shouldn’t Abandon TikTok, Neither of which is Protected by Chinese Laws. But Tech Giants Are Taking a Stand

Brooke Oberwetter, a spokeswoman for TikTok, said to The Wall Street Journal that the move was a political signal rather than a practical solution for security concerns, and claimed that the ban would have minimal impact because very few House-managed phones have TikTok installed.

The irony of US lawmakers pursuing a solution to a problem that already has been solved by draft legislation, but not actually fixed due to its own inaction, was not lost on the members. While primarily focused on a single company, the hearing, Florida congresswoman Kathy Castor said, should really serve as a broader call to action. “From surveillance, tracking, personal data gathering, and addictive algorithmic operations that serve up harmful content and have a corrosive effect on our kids’ mental and physical well-being,” she said, Americans deserve protection, no matter the source.

Tech giants have repeatedly deployed their CEOs to Capitol Hill, who in some cases have made arguments citing the threat of Chinese competition. They rely on trade associations and advertising campaigns for help in making the case against legislative threats to their business.

The tech industry has faced allegations in the past. Big Tech has been made out as one of Washington’s largest villains for a number of reasons.

TikTok does not operate in China. But since the Chinese government enjoys significant leverage over businesses under its jurisdiction, the theory goes that ByteDance, and thus indirectly, TikTok, could be forced to cooperate with a broad range of security activities, including possibly the transfer of TikTok data.

The Bytesdale lobbying, Google, Amazon and TikTok big tech: What the tech industry wants from a big tech bill?

Beckerman told CNN that they think a lot of the concerns are overstated, but that they do believe the problems can be solved through government negotiations.

In 2019, ByteDance had 17 lobbyists and spent $270,000 on lobbying, according to public records gathered by the transparency group OpenSecrets. By the end of last year, its lobbyist count had more than doubled and the company had spent nearly $5.2 million on lobbying.

Meta spent more than 20 million dollars last year, making it the biggest internet industry lobbying firm. Next was Amazon at $19 million, then Google at almost $10 million. The parent of TikTok spent less than $10 million in lobbying, but it was still at number four on the list.

The American innovation and choice online act would prevent Amazon from taking on third-party sellers in its own marketplace because of barriers it would erect between tech platforms’ various lines of business. That legislation was a product of a 16-month House antitrust investigation into the tech industry that concluded, in 2020, that many of the biggest tech companies were effectively monopolies.

For a brief moment this month, lawmakers seemed poised to pass a bill that could force Meta, Google and other platforms to pay news organizations a larger share of ad revenues. Meta warned it could have to remove news content from its platforms if the bill passed.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/22/tech/washington-tiktok-big-tech/index.html

The Future of Social Media: Why Silicon Valley Tech Platforms Cannot Be Harmed and the First Amendment As a Second Law in the U.S. Social Media Landscape

Time and again, Silicon Valley’s biggest players have maneuvered expertly in Washington, defending their turf from lawmakers keen to knock them down a peg.

By contrast, decisions about the rules government might impose on tech platforms have called into question how those regulations may affect different parts of the economy, from small businesses to individual users to the future of the internet itself.

The First Amendment may be raised in some instances, such as with the proposed revision to the tech industry’s content moderation liability shield, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Democrats have said Section 230 should be changed because it gives social media companies a pass to leave some hate speech and offensive content unaddressed, while Republicans have called for changes to the law so that platforms can be pressured to remove less content.

The politics of regulating technology combined with the technical challenges of doing so have made it very difficult to reach an accord.

In higher education, teaching about social media is a standard part of the curriculum. The app has fundamentally changed the nature of modern communication with its aesthetics, practices, storytelling, and information-sharing.

From an educational standpoint, how are media and communications professors supposed to train students to be savvy content creators and consumers if we can’t teach a pillar of the modern media landscape? While students have access to TikTok in the privacy of their homes, professors can no longer show them TikTok in class or use a web browser to view it. Professors will not be able to train their students in best practices for these purposes because a lot of brands rely on TikTok. The ability for students to see the things they are learning in real time is one of the many benefits of TikTok.

The world keeps turning as these states implement their bans, leaving their citizens disadvantaged in a fast-paced media world. The media and communications student in the states will be at an disadvantage when applying for jobs, as their peers from other states are able to receive education and training.

The professor must do research. Social media scholars in these states quite literally cannot do what they have been hired to do and be experts in if these bans persist. While university compliance offices have said the bans may only be on campus Wi-Fi and mobile data is still allowed, who will foot that bill for one to pay for a more expensive data plan on their phone? The answer is no one. While working at home does remain an option, professors are also employees who are expected to be on campus regularly to show they are in fact working. If you want to do research on TikTok on campus, you have to use video streaming via mobile data, which can be expensive if you accidentally go over one of one’s limits.

The Energy and Commerce Committee confirmed the hearing in a press release Monday announcing that the TikTok chief would testify on March 23rd. This upcoming hearing on Capitol Hill will be the first time that a chief executive of a company has been hauled to answer questions.

Earlier this month, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was reportedly considering offering a bill to ban a broader “category of applications” that could be applied to other apps that pose security risks, according to Axios.

The app, owned by ByteDance, Inc., has been under fire since the Trump administration, when the former president signed an executive order to enforce a nationwide ban of the app, but ByteDance sued and it never went through.

In guidance issued Monday, Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote that all executive agencies and those that contracts with them need to remove any TikTok application within 30 days of the notice. Within 90 days, agencies have to include a clause in their contracts that prohibits the short-form video app from being used on devices.

The CEO of Global Cyber Strategies said that it was life or death for TikTok, from their point of view. “They are throwing everything they can at the problem.”

When Rob Joyce, the National Security Agency’s director of cybersecurity, was asked by reporters in December to articulate his security concerns about TikTok, he offered a general warning rather than a specific allegation.

Apple and the United States Senate Intelligence Committee: What are we doing here to protect our country? A question raised by Senator Mike Rounds

Unlike Google, Apple has a lot to lose regarding its relationship with both the US and China. Cook has had a great deal of success at Apple because he has good relationships with both the Chinese government and manufacturers.

The company has previously said that it welcomes “the opportunity to set the record straight about TikTok, ByteDance, and the commitments we are making.”

The representative of TikTok said that they hoped that Congress would take a more deliberative approach to the issues, by sharing details with the full Committee.

“If you’re certainly willing to fly a balloon over your continental airspace—and have people see it with a naked eye—what would make you not weaponize data? Or use an app that is on the phone of 60 million Americans to tell stories in society that try to affect political debate in this country? was a question posed by Senate Intelligence Committee vice chair Marco Rubio.

“There’s no question about the fact that they are trying to gather as much data as they can about all aspects of our country, and even the most minuscule, small items can add up to providing them with more data,” says Republican senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota. “There’s a huge amount of data out there, which will never be touched, never be used, but it’s the small pieces that add up. They are working it. They are patient. But they clearly see us as a threat, and they’re collecting data.”

“None of the suggested … efforts were particularly relevant to my concerns,” senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat of Colorado, told congressional reporters after hosting Chew in his office last week.

The NSA, TikTok, and the American Embassy: What we’re trying to say about the government and tech companies in the U.S.

Gen. Nakasone told the committee that he could turn off the message when he had so many people listening to it.

The facts of the agreement and what we have achieved are not being brought up in the debate over our status. We will continue to do our part to deliver a comprehensive national security plan for the American people,” Brooke Oberwetter from TikTok said in statement.

A bipartisan Senate bill that Virginia Democrat Mark Warner and South Dakota Republican John Thune are expected to unveil on Tuesday would give the Commerce Department authority to develop “mitigation measures,” up to and including a ban, to meet the risk posed by foreign-linked technologies.

Like the US government push to ban hardware and other gear made by Huawei, another Chinese technology giant, US officials are often short on specifics when asked to show public proof of collusion between the Chinese government and ByteDance.

The Director of the NSA said in December that people were always looking for the smoking gun. “I characterize it much more as a loaded gun.”

We also learn that TikTok has 7,000 American employees, which is less than the 10,000 or more that TikTok aimed for in 2020 but a big leap over the 1,400 US headcount that year.

Republican Rep. Michael McCaul has called TikTok a “spy balloon in your phone,” and fellow Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher has called TikTok “digital fentanyl.”

CNN Primetime: Is Time Up for TikTok?” Revisiting the Afterglow of the China-Israel War on Wall Street

There was drama over a Chinese spy balloon that flew across the US skies before it was shot down. The president of China traveled to Moscow this week in an attempt to repair his relationship with Putin, after the International Criminal Court accused him of war crimes. The Chinese leader said he was ready to stand guard over the world order in order to challenge the US based system that had been in place since World War II.

As a growing number of lawmakers raise national security concerns about TikTok’s ties to China, and some experts worry about the app’s impact on young people’s mental health, CNN is hosting a special to dig into these issues. Watch “CNN Primetime: Is time up for TikTok?” Thursday, March 23 at 9 p.m. ET.

At a Harvard Business Review conference earlier this month, where executives, professors and artists appeared for talks on corporate leadership and emotional intelligence, Shou Chew attempted to save his company.

It was a rare chance for the public to hear what the Chew had to say. Yet his company’s app is among the most popular in America, with more than 150 million active users.

A press conference is planned for Wednesday with dozens of social media creators on the steps of the Capitol, some of whom have been flown out there by TikTok. There is a company that pays for advertisements for a Beltway audience. And last week it put out a docuseries highlighting American small business owners who rely on the platform for their livelihoods.

TikTok has invited researchers and academics to its Washington, D.C., office to learn more about how it is addressing lawmakers concerns over its ties to China through its parent company, ByteDance. Its parent company has also ramped up federal lobbying, spending more than $5 million last year, according to data tracked by OpenSecrets.

TikTok has set a default one-hour daily screen time limit on every account for users under the age of 18 in order to prevent teens from scrolling all the time. It rolled out a feature that aimed to offer more information to users about why its powerful algorithm recommends certain videos. The company pledged to give researchers more information.

The series highlighted inspiring stories of American small business owners. The first 60-second clips feature a Mississippi soap maker with a deep Southern accent who built her company on the app, as well as an educationalist who quit his job to help toddlers read with videos on TikTok.

The list of expected attendees includes a disabled Asian American creator using her platform to combat ableism, a small business owner from South Carolina who launched a greeting card company via TikTok, and an Ohio-based chef who built her bakery business via the app. Some of the creators have hundreds of thousand or even millions of followers on TikTok.

From TikTok Challenges to NyQuil Chicken: The Story of a Pseudo-Democratic Chairman of the House Select Committee on China

Even with these efforts, Sherman expressed some skepticism about how persuasive the PR push will be, mostly because of how divided Washington is right now.

Insider Intelligence principal analyst, Jasmine Enberg said that the fate of TikTok was uncertain due to the questioning of Chew by lawmakers.

The new House Select Committee on China has gotten more attention, according to Raja Krishnamoorthy of Illinois, the top Democrat on the committee.

The hearing lasted for more than five hours, and began with calls for a ban on the app in the United States. The company was facing a long and difficult battle to improve relations with Washington because of the bipartisan push to crack down on the popular short-form video app.

One of the first things Chew heard was that his platform should be banned. That was said by Chair McMorris-Rodgers. Her mind seemed made up, as did many of the members of Congress on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and for the next few hours, Chew was berated by the committee members for everything from TikTok challenges to NyQuil chicken.

Much of his attempts to stress that his company is not part of the Chinese government were rejected by the public. The chief executive was questioned by members of Congress who did not believe him.

I have seen no evidence of this happening and I have looked in. “Our commitment is to move their data into the United States, to be stored on American soil by an American company, overseen by American personnel. So the risk would be similar to any government going to an American company, asking for data.”

We are very transparent with our users regarding what we collect. “I don’t believe what we collect is more than most players in the industry.”

Rep. Pallone’s testimony at the New Jersey House of Representatives on the “Does TikTok Promote Selfharm and Emotional Distress”

New Jersey Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone, ranking member of the committee, for example, said Thursday: “Research has found that TikTok’s algorithms recommend videos to teens that create and exacerbate feelings of emotional distress, including videos promoting suicide, self-harm and eating disorders.”

Rep. Bob Latta, a Republican from Ohio, accused TikTok of promoting a video on the so-called “blackout challenge” or choking challenge to the feed of a 10-year-old girl from Pennsylvania, who later died after trying to mimic the challenge in the video.

There is a lack of adequate content moderation, which leaves room for the children to be exposed to content that encourages self harm.

Tony Crdenas, a Democrat from California, was angered by what he perceived to be Chew’s indirect answers and compared him to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who in his own testimonies in the past has also frustrated some members of Congress.

Crdenas said, “You have been one of the few people to unite this committee.” You remind me of someone I know. When he came here, I said to my staff, ‘He reminds me of Fred Astaire — good dancer with words.’ And you are doing the same today. A lot of your answers are very vague; they are either yes or no.

The 40-year-old Harvard-educated Chew was never going to get a warm welcome from US lawmakers. The communication was clear ahead of Thursday’s hearing. He spent hours and hours preparing for his first sworn testimony before US lawmakers, as he knew he would likely be greeted with a cold reception.

TikTok’s Chief Executive Revisited: “Do we Care about the Evidence?” Rep. Kat Cammack and Sen. Tony Crdenas

Perhaps no exchange summed up Thursday’s hearing like a moment following Rep. Kat Cammack’s lengthy critique of TikTok’s content moderation and links to China.

Some transactions can pose data security risks, including giving a foreign person access to a trove of Americans’ sensitive personal data as well as access to intellectual property, source code, or other potentially sensitive information, according to a Department spokesman. “CFIUS, on a case-by-case basis, will ensure the protection of national security, including to prevent the misuse of data through espionage, tracking, and other means that threaten national security.”

“I think a lot of risks that are pointed out are hypothetical and theoretical risks,” Chew said. “I have not seen any evidence. I am eagerly awaiting discussions where we can talk about evidence and then we can address the concerns that are being raised.”

That question has been posed in the halls of congress, Wall Street and the public writ large after the social media company’s chief executive waffled on Thursday.

It was striking how the TikTok chief was questioned by both Republicans and Democrats in a way that had never been seen before in American politics. “Mr. Chew, welcome to the most bipartisan committee in Congress,” Republican Rep. Buddy Carter said. “You have been one of the few members to unite this committee,” said Tony Crdenas.

To be clear, quite a few members of Congress were simply not interested in the facts. They were never going to be moved by anything Chew said. As cameras rolled, they had their talking points and were going to use them. They couldn’t care less about technical talk related to routing server traffic through Oracle. It was never going to matter or impact how they behaved.

Lawmakers from both sides were eager to demonstrate their strength against China in the hearing. The statement said that there was a day that was dominated by political posturing that failed to acknowledge the solutions already underway through Project Texas or address industry-wide issues of youth safety.

Digital Privacy in the Age of Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and the Times of Covid-19: Editorial Note: Alex Stamos, Chief Information Security Officer at Stanford, Inc

Editor’s Note: Alex Stamos is a founding partner of the Krebs Stamos Group as well as the founder and director of the Stanford Internet Observatory. Prior to launching KSG and the SIO, Alex served as the chief security officer of Facebook and as the chief information security officer at Yahoo. The views expressed here are his own. Read more opinion on CNN.

TikTok was the product that attracted the attention of young people around the world who spend hours per day watching short videos, and it has a carefully cultivated community of top creators.

The Chinese Communist Party which is emerging from the Covid-19 crisis with a burning desire to demonstrate the power of its leader and as well as the new coalition of autocracies are clearly at the start of a long struggle between the world’s democracies and a new coalition of autocracies

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit this week to a battered, beleaguered Vladimir Putin only highlighted its new role, as the Chinese leader publicly legitimized a Russian president who was indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes only last week. In the South China Sea, Taiwan Strait and disputed Japanese waters, China’s rapidly growing military continues to push boundaries and prepare for conflicts with its neighbors and the West.

Unrest in Hong Kong and the embarrassing emergence of Covid-19 from Wuhan has motivated China to rapidly improve its surveillance, influence and control around the world. This investment has paid off, and many observers, including our team at Stanford, consider China to be the world’s leader in this area.

It’s time for Congress to finally pass a comprehensive privacy law. With state privacy laws popping up across the US, creating chaos for American companies without addressing some fundamental issues, it’s time for Congress and the president to create predictable rules and take back leadership in tech regulation. The kinds of critical data that can be stored in the us, in our allies, in neutral countries and in our adversaries can be defined by Congress.

Few members of Congress seemed sympathetic to that argument, though — and it’s the potential for future abuse by foreign actors that has seemingly scared lawmakers most. Congress has been caught on its back foot before, introducing data protection bills in the aftermath of American-made social media scandals, like the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on the Facebook Files.

It’s difficult for researchers to monitor TikTok for this sort of manipulation because it makes it difficult for them to be transparent. US companies are often more transparent than TikTok because of their own voluntary decisions. Twitter, a leader in transparency, recently announced a plan to remove the external access that is critical to finding bots and influence campaigns. The proposed Platform Accountability and Transparency Act would create a fair baseline for all companies and would remove this national security issue from the whims of individual tech billionaires.

The US and our allies should be involved in the information war and protect and support journalists who are able to operate independently of any government, as well as build civil society coalitions that will counteract Chinese rule in countries such as India and Turkey.

Washington is correct to deal with the immediate risks posed by the single chess piece of TikTok, but it should also see the whole board and plan for the next 20 moves. The history of the rest of the 21st century depends on it.

The Social Media Users of TikTok and Other Social Media Companies should not be viewed as a National Security Threat, but as an Ideological Challenge to China

Legal experts say that the laws in question are broad and require all organizations or citizens in China to support, assist and cooperate with state intelligence work.

Chew, in a rare moment of apparent frustration, told lawmakers at the hearing that TikTok and Citizen Lab were really saying a version of the same thing. “Citizen Lab is saying they cannot prove a negative, which is what I’ve been trying to do for the last four hours,” he said.

There is no proof that TikTok has done that. TikTok has said the keylogging function is used for “debugging, troubleshooting, and performance monitoring,” as well as to detect bots and spam. Keyloggers are popular in the technology industry. That doesn’t mean it’s bad that TikTok or its peers use a keylogger, but it does mean it isn’t proof that TikTok’s product is a national security threat like other websites.

“We have to trust that those companies are doing the right thing with the information and access we’ve provided them,” said Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, a longtime ethical hacker and Twitter’s former head of security who turned whistleblower. “We probably shouldn’t. This is due to a concern about ultimate governance of these companies.

Lin told CNN that TikTok and other social media companies’ appetite for data highlights policy failures to pass strong privacy laws that regulate the tech industry writ large.

The interrogation of TikTok’s CEO showed how China is being viewed as an ideological challenge, one antithetical to America’s values and way of life, much as the Soviet Union was.

The hearing was the latest in a recent sequence of events that have made the long predicted clash between the existing superpower, the United States, and the rising one, China, a tangible reality for millions of Americans.

The hostility of some of the lawmakers illustrated how opposition to China has become one of the dominant organizing principles of Washington politics and a rare issue that unites both parties. But the tone of some of the questions and the disrespect shown to Chew also explained why some Asian American groups are worried that fierce hostility toward Beijing in Washington could translate into more intimidation and violence against Asian Americans across the country.

If it is used that way it will be a powerful propaganda machine. This is an incredible misinformation, disinformation machine. I’m not saying they’re doing it right now, but that potential, if President Xi in China wants to somehow invade … Taiwan, and suddenly folks not only in America but around the world are starting to see videos that reinforces that kind of message, that is a propaganda tool that makes every other possibility pale.”

He diligently opened his packet of notes while he was taking his seat on the Energy and Commerce Committee. In the packet, there appeared to be a sheet matching the names and faces of the lawmakers preparing to question him — many of whom had already made up their minds over whether the app was safe for Americans.

Facebook ban on social media privacy: The impact on content creators and publishers is expected to increase if a data privacy ban is approved and enforced

Facebook paid $5 billion to the Federal Trade Commission in the Cambridge Analytica case. Legislative debate on a federal data privacy network started after the scandal. Years later, Congress has yet to approve any meaningful data protections governing US or foreign-owned social media companies.

A recent investor’s note states that if a ban is approved and enforced, the content, user count and engagement, and likely ad dollars forSnapchat,Inspect, andYouTube will increase.

There is a boost for at least one company. The stock price of the company increased in the days leading up to the appearance of TikTok before Congress.

If that happens, Lian Jye Su, an analyst with ABI Search, believes users will follow their favorite TikTok influencers and content creators wherever they go.

Su said that most users would flock to where the creators went next. Content creators will still prefer places where they can monetize their content on social media platforms, and they stand to benefit the most.

Smaller platforms have the opportunity to gain ground, too, Su said. Short-form video platform Triller, which reportedly has over 450 million users, is actively courting popular content creators from TikTok with cash bonuses, partnerships and other incentives to switch platforms. Meanwhile, Dubsmach – a Reddit-owned short video platform – and Clash, which allows people to create 21-second looping videos, are other platforms that could be increasingly appealing to creators.

“For Snap, which has a weaker network effect than Meta, a possibly more trusted US TikTok may make it more difficult to attract users away from or keep them from migrating to TikTok,” Moghaharbi wrote in the investor’s note.

The Tech Critics of TikTok: A Counterattack on China’s Tech Genocide and its Importance on Children’s Lives

China’s also retaliated against its own citizens. Fan Bingbing was famous for her crime of failing to pay enough taxes, but when Jack Ma spoke out against tech regulation, she disappeared in a similar fashion.

They weren’t fans. The TikTok app was flooded with videos mocking Congress, supporting TikTok and pointing out the equally egregious abuse of data and algorithm by its users, in order to show their hypocrisy regarding the Congress targeting of TikTok. I do not believe that TikTok is inciting a genocide as Meta has.

nearly every Congressional hearing on Big Tech—whether about data privacy, monopolies, or in the case of last week’s TikTok hearing, national security—eventually features one or more lawmakers bemoaning something along the lines of, “But think of the children!”

The Center for Countering Digital Hate said that without legally mandated safety, the program will continue to put vulnerable users at risk. “Congress owes it to America’s parents today to get answers.”

Students at Denver’s East High School ran out of their classrooms during a school shooting about 24 hours before Chew sat under congressional questioning. Earlier this year, a pandemic-era program offering free school lunches for all children expired, reverting to an income-based system that will introduce more barriers for children who need it the most. Nearly one-third of children in the US live in poverty, largely thanks to deeply entrenched issues of economic inequality and an eroding social safety net.

One caption said there needed to be an age limit in Congress.

The app doesn’t use voice, face or body information to identify users, and the only face data that the app collects is for sunglasses, says Chew.

Why are people’s eyes dilated if they’re not seeing them? Biden, Hudson, and Hudson: A polarized congressman’s question on TikTok

‘Why do you need to know where the eyes are if you’re not seeing if they’re dilated?” There was a lot of comments about the congressman’s questions.

The clips on TikTok said Congress members didn’t know how modern technology works. They believe members of Congress are detached from technology and unaware of how tech companies within their own country operate, resulting in easily mockable questions.

It’s a bipartisan opinion. The Biden administration threatened a ban if the app’s Chinese owners don’t spin off their share of the social media platform.

Another clip that has been widely circulating on the app is one of US Rep. Richard Hudson, who represents North Carolina’s 9th district, questioning Chew on how WiFi connectivity works. The “yes or no” style of interrogating on topics that were complex, or frankly irrelevant, were a major point of exasperation for users.