United States: US lawmakers grilled TikTok CEO Mr. Shou Zi Chew for 6 hours on national security concerns about the Chinese-owned video app.

Mr. Shou Zi Chew’s testimony before Congress did little to allay American concerns about ByteDance, the parent firm of TikTok, which is based in China. Instead, it gave legislators’ proposals to outlaw the platform nationally new impetus.

Throughout the five hours of evidence, Mr. Chew insisted the platform was doing all possible to protect the safety of its 150 million US users and denied the app shared data or had any connections to the Chinese Communist Party.

Mr. Chew stated that TikTok for more than two years has been “building what amounts to a firewall to seal off protected U.S. user data from unauthorized foreign access. The bottom line is this: American data stored on American soil, by an American company, overseen by American personnel.”

However, not a single lawmaker supported TikTok because they thought Chew’s responses on China were evasive and expressed worries about the influence the programme has over American youngsters. Others have charged TikTok with disseminating material that fosters child exploitation, the sale of illegal drugs, and eating disorders.

In response to numerous pointed questions, Mr. Chew stated that the problems were “complex” and not specific to TikTok. The firm claims to have invested more than $1.5 billion on data security initiatives under the name “Project Texas,” which employs roughly 1,500 full-time staff as of right now and has a contract with Oracle Corp to store data from TikTok’s American users.

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