What's Wrong With TikTok?

By: Reporter, Maddy Zemke

On Thursday, March 23rd, Congress held a hearing with the CEO of TikTok, Shou Chew. The bill used in the debate was The RESTRICT Act, the idea of this act is to protect US citizens from security threats, mainly from ever-changing technology. The full text can be found at ww.congress.gov. With full transparency, our U.S. representatives were disrespectful towards Mr. Chew. Throughout the hearing, they were repeatedly cutting him off and not fully listening to the information he was providing. On multiple accounts, Chairwoman Rodgers said TikTok aligns itself with the C.C.P. despite Mr. Chew's explanations and corrections. In his opening statement, he states how many of the parent company Bytedance’s employees are American and how many of TikTok’s employees are American, also mentioning that they are partially based in Los Angeles, California. 

To address our senators’ security concerns, the fear of data theft is very real. The most common forms of data that are accessed, leaked, or stolen are things like names and surnames, home addresses, card ID numbers, or email addresses. However, TikTok is not the only company that could be held guilty of this. Plenty of other platforms can access and tamper with user data, such as Meta (parent company of Facebook and Instagram) and Twitter. To conclude, the hearing was executed somewhat poorly. If the U.S. Congress wants to protect U.S. data and its people, there should have been multiple CEOs present at the hearing, all testifying. It is unfair to place so much blame and hatred upon one company for something many others can do.