TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew Testifies that the TikTok App is Harmless

Following growing concerns from the U.S. surrounding China's potential surveillance of U.S. citizens, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has testified before Congress that TikTok does not harvest any private information from users. Key concerns at the hearing were surrounding spyware, private data exfiltration, and potential damage to children's mental health.

Over five hours of testimony, Chew repeatedly denied the app has connections with the Chinese Communist Party. "We do not promote or remove content at the request of the Chinese government." However, TikTok parent company ByteDance has an internal Chinese Communist Party (CCP) committee. In addition to this, the Vice President of the committee, Zhang Fuping, has stated that the aim of ByteDance is to "transmit the correct political direction, public opinion guidance and value orientation into every business and product line".

Chew also repeatedly denied that the app shares any private information, claiming that TikTok has been "building what amounts to a firewall to seal off protected U.S. user data from unauthorized foreign access." However, research from Pellaeon Lin of the University of Toronto has revealed that TikTok shared data not only with parent company ByteDance, but also with AppsFlyer, Google, Meta, Taobao, Umeng and Xiaomi.

This data was found to include unique device identifier codes, detailed information about the device's screen, information about the device model and carrier, information regarding external storage, and information about the in-app media consumed. Of note is that both TikTok and Douyin (the Chinese equivalent app) were found to contain server-side search censorship. Douyin was found to transmit geolocation co-ordinates of the device, and is currently banned from the Google Play Store for subverting their policies on runtime dynamic downloads. Additionally, the US, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Bangladesh have attempted to restrict TikTok usage out of national security concerns.

While Lin did not observe either app actively collecting contact lists, recording audio or recording video, it is worth mentioning that Lin's statement on data collection was made with the caveat "without user permission". TikTok explicitly asks users for their permission for access to the camera, the microphone, the contact list, external storage, and device passwords. In addition to this, Lin found that some data being transmitted was obfuscated to a degree that it could not be decrypted.

In November 2019, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's International Cyber Policy Centre stated that many Chinese tech companies "are engaged in deeply unethical behavior [...] their work directly supports and enables mass human rights abuses". And in February 2020, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman went on record saying that TikTok is "fundamentally parasitic spyware" that is "always listening" and "the fingerprinting technology they use is truly terrifying".

At Thursday's House hearing, Representative Neal Dunn asked Chew if ByteDance has spied on Americans at Beijing's request. Chew answered "No." Dunn then asked about media reports that a China-based team at ByteDance planned to use TikTok to monitor the location of specific U.S. citizens, and repeated his question about whether ByteDance was spying. "I don't think that spying is the right way to describe it," Chew responded.

The U.S. lawmakers deemed Chew's answers on China evasive, and switched their line of questioning to the power that TikTok holds over U.S. children. Several accused TikTok of promoting content that deliberately encourages eating disorders, illegal drug sales, and sexual exploitation. "TikTok could be designed to minimize the harm to kids, but a decision was made to aggressively addict kids in the name of profits," said Representative Kathy Castor at the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce committee hearing.

Representative Gus Bilirakis showed the committee a collection of short TikTok videos that appeared to glorify self-harm and suicide, or outright tell viewers to kill themselves. "Your technology is literally leading to death," Bilirakis argued. "We must save our children from big tech companies like yours, who continue to abuse and manipulate them for your own gain."