Makena Kelly

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.”

“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.

The speech followed a Sunday announcement from the government’s top banking regulators that they were setting up an emergency lending program to ensure all SVB depositors are made whole.