Act Daily News
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Is TikTook’s time up?
That’s the query coursing by way of the halls of Congress, Wall Street, and the general public writ massive after the social media firm’s chief government, Shou Zi Chew, waffled for hours earlier than US lawmakers on Thursday.
“TikTok’s fate in the US is on shakier ground than ever following lawmakers’ grueling questioning of Chew,” Insider Intelligence principal analyst Jasmine Enberg stated.
The 40-year-old Harvard-educated Chew was by no means going to get a heat welcome from US lawmakers. That a lot had been telegraphed forward of Thursday’s listening to within the clearest potential method. And Chew was nicely conscious he would doubtless be greeted with a chilly reception, which is why he spent hours and hours making ready over the past week for his first sworn testimony earlier than US lawmakers.
But it was placing how the TikTook chief flailed underneath aggressive questioning from each Republicans and Democrats, uniting the events in a means that’s not often ever seen in American politics anymore. “Mr. Chew, welcome to the most bipartisan committee in Congress,” Republican Rep. Buddy Carter stated. Democratic Rep. Tony Cárdenas echoed, “You have been one of the few members to unite this committee.”
A model of this text first appeared within the “Reliable Sources” publication. Sign up for the each day digest chronicling the evolving media panorama right here.
To be clear, fairly a couple of members of Congress have been merely not within the information. They have been by no means going to be moved by something Chew stated. They had their speaking factors and have been going to deploy them throughout their allotted time as cameras have been rolling. They couldn’t care much less about technical discuss associated to routing server visitors by way of Oracle. It was by no means going to matter or influence how they behaved.
“Shou came prepared to answer questions from Congress, but, unfortunately, the day was dominated by political grandstanding that failed to acknowledge the real solutions already underway through Project Texas or productively address industry-wide issues of youth safety,” a TikTook spokesperson stated after the listening to.
That stated, Chew wanted to supply clear, direct solutions to questions posed by lawmakers, notably these relating to fears of potential Chinese authority over the corporate. Instead, his murky solutions on questions pertaining to the Communist Party of China led to added confusion at instances.
Even if all the pieces TikTook claims about firewalling US information from Chinese actors through Oracle’s Texas-based servers is true, it was evident from Thursday’s listening to that lawmakers merely don’t purchase it. And that poses a major problem for the corporate because it faces mounting requires it to be outright banned.
As Kara Swisher advised me, “While the politicians on both sides were posing for the cameras and should have been scrutinizing US social media sites for years and passing laws to protect US consumers, TikTok is going to get the brunt of it and will now have only two choices, a spin or a ban.”
Source: www.cnn.com