By KELVIN CHAN, HALELUYA HADERO and FARNOUSH AMIRI (Associated Press)
WASHINGTON (AP) — TikTok is ramping up a public relations marketing campaign to fend off the potential for a nationwide ban by the Biden administration, and it’s bringing some unconventional advocates to assist: on-line influencers.
Dozens of TikTok creators — some with thousands and thousands of followers on the video-sharing app — got here to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to foyer in favor of the platform, at some point earlier than lawmakers are slated to grill the corporate’s chief government about considerations over person knowledge falling into the palms of the Chinese authorities.
Shou Zi Chew plans to inform Congress on Thursday that TikTok, which was based by Chinese entrepreneurs, is dedicated to person security, knowledge safety and safety, and conserving the platform free from Chinese authorities affect. He can even reply questions from U.S. lawmakers frightened in regards to the social media platform’s results on its younger person base.
At the center of TikTok’s hassle is a Chinese nationwide intelligence legislation that might compel Chinese corporations to fork over knowledge to the federal government for no matter functions it deems to contain nationwide safety. There’s additionally concern Beijing would possibly attempt to push pro-China narratives or misinformation by the platform.
At a media occasion coordinated by TikTok on Wednesday, some content material creators acknowledged that considerations about knowledge safety are authentic, however pointed to precautions the corporate is taking, similar to a $1.5 billion plan — dubbed Project Texas — to route all U.S. knowledge to home servers owned and maintained by the software program big Oracle.
TikTok has been trying to promote that proposal to the Biden administration, however skeptics have argued it doesn’t go far sufficient. The administration is reportedly demanding the corporate’s Chinese homeowners promote their stakes or face a nationwide ban.
Janette Ok, a trend and wonder influencer on TikTok, mentioned in an interview Wednesday that TikTok invited her to the lobbying occasion just a few weeks in the past and paid for her journey to Washington. She’s been in a position to make a full-time profession from her movies, incomes earnings from partnerships with manufacturers seeking to seize the eyes of her 1.7 million followers. She mentioned her reputation on TikTok has additionally allowed her to produce other alternatives, like TV and industrial appearing roles.
“I don’t know much about politics, but I know a lot about fashion, and I know a lot about people,” Ok mentioned. “And just to be here and share my story is what TikTok has invited me to do.”
Tensions round TikTok have been constructing on Capitol Hill, reaching a boiling level late final yr when a proposal to ban the app off of presidency telephones handed with bipartisan assist and was signed into legislation by President Joe Biden. House Republicans are pushing a invoice that might give Biden the facility to ban the app.
Other payments have additionally been launched — some bipartisan — together with a measure that might circumvent the challenges the administration would face in court docket if it moved ahead with sanctions towards the social media firm.
The effort to focus on TikTok is an element of a bigger, harder strategy that Congress has taken previously a number of months as China’s relationship with two U.S. adversaries — Russia and Iran — has come into focus. A latest incident with a spy balloon pressured even some cautious congressional Democrats to hitch Republicans in opposition, and there may be now a powerful bipartisan concern in Washington that Beijing would use authorized and regulatory energy to grab American person knowledge or use the platform to push favorable narratives or misinformation.
But the corporate has additionally gotten assist from at the least three progressive lawmakers who say they oppose a ban on the platform. At a information convention Wednesday with the influencers, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., characterised the nationwide safety considerations which have been raised as xenophobic hysteria on account of TikTok’s Chinese origins. He mentioned if Congress desires to have an “honest” dialog about knowledge assortment, it ought to give attention to a nationwide privateness legislation that targets all social media corporations – not simply TikTok.
“Usually when there’s an issue of national security concern, they hold a bipartisan Congressional briefing on that particular issue,” Bowman mentioned. “We have not received a bipartisan Congressional briefing on the national security risk of TikTok.”
TikTok’s response to the political strain might be seen throughout the nation’s Capitol, with the corporate placing up adverts in space airports and metro stations that embody guarantees of securing customers knowledge and privateness and making a protected platform for its younger customers. Last yr, the corporate spent greater than $5.3 million on dispatching lobbyists to the Hill to make its case, in response to Open Secrets, a nonprofit that tracks lobbying spending.
On Thursday, Chew might be sticking to a well-known script as he urges officers towards pursuing an all-out ban on TikTok or for the corporate to be offered off to new homeowners. TikTok’s efforts to make sure the safety of its customers’ knowledge go “above and beyond” what any of its rivals are doing, in response to Chew’s ready remarks launched forward of his look earlier than the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Chew pushed again towards fears that TikTok might grow to be a device of China’s ruling Communist Party as a result of its mum or dad firm, ByteDance, was based in Beijing and likewise operates from there.
“Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country,” Chew mentioned.
He distanced TikTok from its Chinese roots and denied the “inaccurate” perception that TikTok’s company construction makes it “beholden to the Chinese government.” ByteDance has advanced right into a privately held “global enterprise,” Chew mentioned, with 60% owned by huge institutional buyers, 20% owned by the Chinese entrepreneurs who based it and the remaining by staff.
It’s “emphatically untrue” that TikTok sends knowledge on its American customers to Beijing, he mentioned.
“TikTok has never shared, or received a request to share, U.S. user data with the Chinese government,” Chew mentioned. “Nor would TikTok honor such a request if one were ever made.”
Whether these guarantees will alleviate concern is one other matter. TikTok has come below hearth within the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific, the place a rising variety of governments have banned the app from units used for official enterprise. India, Afghanistan and Indonesia have banned it nationwide.
Chew, a 40-year-old Singaporean who was appointed CEO in 2021, mentioned in a TikTok video this week that the congressional listening to comes at a “pivotal moment” for the corporate, which now has 150 million American customers.
Chew mentioned TikTok’s knowledge safety undertaking is the correct reply, not a ban or a sale of the corporate.
“No other social media company, or entertainment platform like TikTok, provides this level of access and transparency,” he mentioned.
The firm began deleting the historic protected knowledge of U.S. customers from non-Oracle servers this month, Chew mentioned. When that course of is accomplished later this yr, all U.S. knowledge might be protected by American legislation and managed by a U.S.-led safety group.
“Under this structure, there is no way for the Chinese government to access it or compel access to it,” he mentioned.
He mentioned a TikTok ban would harm the U.S. financial system and small American companies that use the app to promote their merchandise, whereas lowering competitors in an “increasingly concentrated market.” He added {that a} sale “would not impose any new restrictions on data flows or access.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”