TikTok It is the most popular application in the world and the most hated in Washington.. This afternoon, its CEO, Shou Zi Chew, will appear before the United States Congress to try to guarantee the survival of the video platform in the country and appease the wave of restrictions imposed for fear that it will serve as mechanism of espionage at the service of China.
The main executive of the ‘app’ will promise US legislators that he will protect the data of the more than 150 million users in the country against possible government interference and that they will not fall into foreign hands. “TikTok will continue to be a platform for the free expression and will not be manipulated by any government“, Chew will assure in his speech, that as ‘The Wall Street Journal’ has advanced.
TikTok is owned by the Chinese giant ByteDance, which is based in Beijing. In the last two years, the platform has established itself as the most popular in the world, but its growing use has caused concern especially in the US, its main world market. Although US user data is stored on Oracle company servers in Virginia, Washington has insisted that the regime of Xi Jinping could access them. They also believe that Beijing could influence the content shown to Americans.
wave of bans
Both accusations have not been proven, but that has not stopped the White House from accelerating the restrictions against TikTok. Already in 2020, the then president Donald Trump threatened to ban TikTok if he did not sell his business to the American company Oracle. It didn’t prosper. Now, it is Joe Biden who has repeated that threat by demanding that the Chinese owners of ByteDance sell the shares of the company they built. Alerted by the FBI, at least 22 states have prohibited downloading the ‘app’ on official electronic devices, a veto that the federal government has also signed up to and which has become one of the few issues that unite Democrats and Republicans. Some of them even ask for a total ban on the ‘app’.
With the noose around his neck, Chew’s promises are aimed at reducing that tension and reaching an agreement with Washington that allows TikTok to continue operating in the country while maintaining its current structure. ByteDance has stated that 60% of its shares are owned by international investors. These include the world’s largest investment bank, Goldman Sachs, the financial multinational Morgan Stanley or the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, all American. The remaining 40% is divided into two halves: 20% is in the hands of the employees and another 20% in those of its founders, of Chinese nationality and with a greater voting weight than the other shareholders.
Calmar a Washington
To calm lawmakers in the US, TikTok launched the so-called ‘Project Texas’. This plan, in which they have allocated 1.5 million dollars, aims to improve the protection of user data and carry out a public relations offensive to convince regulators, academics and other experts of that privacy reinforcement. Last year, the migration of US data to Oracle’s servers instead of its own began. Now, the plan also contemplates creating a subsidiary company dedicated to ensuring the security of the data and that will be directed by positions agreed with the Government.
Any attempt to ban TikTok in the US could face legal hurdles. And it is that the American Union for Civil Liberties has affirmed that a total ban on the Chinese ‘app’ would violate the right to freedom of expression enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution. It could also pose political risks, since the platform is especially popular among the younger base of Democratic voters and in November 2024 the country holds a presidential election in which Biden is at stake for re-election.