In a sentence, from today US Congress Hearing on TikTok was a smash hit: It revealed for five hours just how badly the United States needs national data privacy protections — and how lawmakers somehow believe taking swipes at China is a viable alternative.
For some, the job on Thursday was to cast the only witness to the hearing, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, as a stand-in for the Chinese government — in some cases for communism itself — and then gird him up like a piece of beef. More than a few of the questions lawmakers asked Chew were vague, speculative and irrelevant to the allegations against his company. But the members of Congress who asked those questions feigned little interest in Chew’s answers anyway.
Attempts by Chew, a 40-year-old former Goldman Sachs banker, to explain TikTok’s business practices were often interrupted, and his requests to comment on matters supposedly of major concern to members of Congress were ignored. blocked and occasionally ignored. These chances to get the CEO under oath have been repeatedly squandered in the name of opportunity and for mostly theatrical reasons. Chew, on the other hand, was the portrait of patience, even when talked about. Even as some legislators started asking their own questions and answering them without pause.
The hearing might have been a flop, had lawmakers planned to dig up new dirt on TikTok, which is owned by China-based ByteDance, or even considered what the company might do to address their concerns. But that was not the goal. The House Energy and Commerce Committee had met, it said, to examine “how Congress can protect U.S. data privacy and protect children from harm online.” And the hearing revealed a lot about that.
First, it’s clear that trying to isolate TikTok from its competitors — to treat it differently from dozens of other companies with horrific data about child endangerment and misuse of private data — is a pointless exercise. When asked about TikTok’s tendency to monitor its own users, Chicago congressman Jan Schakowsky cautioned Chew against using legal, typical industry practices as a defense against these abuses. “You could say ‘no more than other companies’,” she said, adding that she preferred “not to meet that standard.”
Okay. But why not?
The truth is that if TikTok went away tomorrow, its users would simply turn to any number of other apps that have no qualms about monitoring the most private moments of their lives and collecting, manipulating, and selling sensitive information about them. Aside from the most serious but largely unsubstantiated allegations against TikTok — that it acts or will act in coordination with Chinese intelligence agencies — there were no privacy concerns raised by lawmakers on Thursday that could not be addressed by existing legislation in support of a national privacy law.
Ensuring that companies and the data brokers they enrich are swiftly punished for blatantly abusing user trust not only has the benefit of addressing not only many of the allegations against TikTok, but also the deceptive practices perpetuated throughout the social media community. prevent industry.
The irony of US legislators pursuing a solution to a problem that has already been solved through bills—but not really solved because of their own inaction—did not entirely escape Members. While the hearing primarily focused on a single company, Florida Congresswoman Kathy Castor said the hearing should really serve as a broader call to action. “From surveillance, tracking, the collection of personal data, to addictive algorithmic operations that offer harmful content and have a detrimental effect on the mental and physical well-being of our children,” she said, Americans deserve protection, regardless of the source.