TikTok CEO Answers All US Accusations About National Security and Youth

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew (photo: screenshot of New York Times event)

JAKARTA - TikTok is currently under a lot of scrutiny by several countries. World leaders, including the President of the United States, Joe Biden, are also concerned that China's platform is dangerous to national security.

During its first congressional hearing, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew denied that his app was used to collect and share user data with the Chinese Communist Party, as alleged.

In addition, during approximately five hours of testimony, Chew repeatedly stated that the application is doing everything to ensure the safety of its 150 million users in America.

"We even built a firewall to shut down protected US user data from unauthorized foreign access. The point is, American data is stored on American soil, by American companies, supervised by American personnel," Chew said, citing Reuters.

But unfortunately, not a single member of parliament supported what Chew said. In fact, presuming that Chew was being evasive.

TikTok Verification System

Apart from issues of national security, the parliament also touched on verification and youth safety issues, including the practice of TikTok content moderation and how to deal with viral "challenges".

Then, amid questions about TikTok's use of biometrics, Chew provided some insight into how they check for potential underage users on their platform.

According to Chew, TikTok uses age gate, which refers to a commonly used method of simply asking users to provide their date of birth to determine their age.

According to him, relying on this one method may not be very effective, considering that there are still many children who falsify their date and year of birth.

So, to be more accurate in determining the age of users, Chew revealed that TikTok scans users' videos to determine their age.

“We've also developed a couple of tools where we look at their public profile, go through the videos they've posted to see if…,” said Chew, who was then interrupted by Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA), saying “That was terrible. Tell me more on that."

"It's public. So if you post a video, you vote for that video to be published, that's how to get people to see your video. We look at them to see if they are age-appropriate of what you're talking about," Chew replied.

TikTok is Considered Danger for Teens

It didn't stop there, lawmakers even considered the TikTok application harmful to children's mental health, and accused this platform of promoting content that encourages eating disorders among children, the sale of illegal drugs, and sexual exploitation.

"TikTok may be designed to minimize harm to children, but the decision was made to aggressively addict children for profit," said Democratic lawmaker Kathy Castor.

However, Chew immediately denied the accusation. He also said that the company has invested in content moderation and artificial intelligence to limit such content. Chew also emphasized that TikTok takes these problems very seriously.