More from TikTok ban: all the news on the app’s shutdown and return in the US
Well, maybe not in 2024 if a new law banning TikTok within the state takes effect. Makena Kelly can explain more.
The bill (PDF) now waits to be signed by Montana governor Greg Gianforte. It would penalize app stores $10,000 per violation per day for distributing TikTok.
TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter said to CNN that “The bill’s champions have admitted that they have no feasible plan for operationalizing this attempt to censor American voices and that the bill’s constitutionality will be decided by the courts... We will continue to fight for TikTok users and creators in Montana whose livelihoods and First Amendment rights are threatened by this egregious government overreach.”
There’s cause for alarm with TikTok — but is it enough to justify building America’s own Great Firewall?
And we bring you the best parts, including Grapefruit Theories and WiFi Problems and The One About The Eyes. We also talk about Bard and ChatGPT… but mostly The One About The Eyes. It’s the Vergecast! This is what hearings do to us.
It’s all been like this. Help.
We’ve been in recess, but we’re back with a series of questions about why TikTok hasn’t removed more content about drugs, including people selling drugs and a Wall Street Journal article about adult content showing up in children’s feeds. Chew’s line is that no company can moderate perfectly — but it’s not going over well.
Rep. Darren Soto asks whether TikTok would consider spinning off from ByteDance, and Chew makes a jab it’s taken a surprising amount of time for him to reach. “I don’t think ownership is the issue here,” he says. “With a lot of respect, American social companies don’t have a good track record with data privacy and user security. Just look at Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, for one example.”
Neal Dunn (who has just compared TikTok to fentanyl and cancer) enters a 2022 Forbes article about TikTok surveillance into the record — casting doubt on Chew’s claims that it’s not a spying risk.
Over the last hour of the TikTok hearing, lawmaker questions have strayed away from TikTok’s alleged relationship with the Chinese government. Republicans and Democrats have been pulling a few TikTok videos portraying violent themes, including a post that appeared to threaten gun violence against the committee and its chairwoman.
Chair Rodgers did not allow Chew to respond to the threatening post, but he was able to comment on concerns lawmakers raised over the app’s ability to promote harmful challenges to young users.
“We have spent a lot of time adopting measures protecting teenagers,” Chew said. “Many of those are first for the social media industry.”
One of the long-running tropes of these hearings is “how much does anyone in the room, including the CEOs and the members of Congress, actually understand the tech at hand?”
To that end, I submit TikTok’s Shou Chew explaining that TikTok doesn’t collect body, face, or voice data to identify users, except when it needs to know where your eyes are for sunglasses filters and such. To which Georgia representative Buddy Carter responded: “Why do you need to see where the eyes are? To see if they’re dilated?”
When Chew explained TikTok’s age-gating process, Carter interjected: “That’s creepy. Tell me more about that.” Which is a good summation of the hearing so far, really.
Rep. McMorris-Rodgers has reminded me that we’re almost halfway through this hearing, and I’m dying. Here’s a picture of my cat Kaiser. Kaiser cannot understand English. Kaiser cannot listen to this hearing. Kaiser is so lucky.
Rep. Bill Johnson is grilling Chew on TikTok security, including TikTok citing a report from CitizenLab on its code’s security. CitizenLab’s director has said he’s “disappointed” that TikTok is — in his opinion — misconstruing the report as a claim that the Chinese government couldn’t get access to it.
Right out of the gate, Republicans and Democrats attacked the company over its alleged ties to the Chinese government.
“Your platform should be banned,” Chair Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-WA) said in her opening statement Thursday.
At times, Democrats like Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. alluded to TikTok not being the only harmful platform, calling for federal data privacy legislation to better regulate the ways US-based companies like Meta and Google collect and share data.
Still, Congress has yet to approve any meaningful federal privacy framework even though the Biden administration has called on TikTok to either sever ties to Bytedance or be banned nationwide.
It’s a threat to shoot members of the congressional committee investigating TikTok. Rep. Kat Cammack says that because somebody was able to post the video on TikTok, TikTok can’t possibly be keeping private user data secure. I agree it’s bad TikTok didn’t take down the video, but... this is not a very logical argument.
