In a stirring reprise of last year’s TikTok congressional performance, CEO Shou Zi Chew took another turn in Washington’s spotlight on Wednesday, answering questions from lawmakers who demonstrated all the restraint of a toddler mid-sugar crash. The hearing, officially convened to discuss privacy and online child safety, quickly evolved into the sequel absolutely no one requested, as House members dusted off their TikTok-is-foreign-menace talking points and gave them the kind of aggressive airing reserved for antique rugs and tech CEOs.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee summoned Chew to explain what exactly TikTok is doing to prevent minors from seeing distressing content, which seems like trying to plug one leak in a colander. Lawmakers also seemed perturbed that TikTok had not yet implemented every conceivable parental control available on Earth, with some commenting darkly on the mere existence of an account for Chew’s own child. These concerns arrived hot on the heels of a 60 Minutes report alleging that TikTok’s algorithm had ushered a 16-year-old into a rather morbid rabbit hole comprised of suggested videos involving suicide and self-harm. A phenomenon that is, alarmingly, more feature than bug in social media’s attention economy.
Perhaps sensing that the actual topic of online child safety did not offer enough political calories, lawmakers inflated the actual grievance to its usual proportions and grilled Chew at length about TikTok’s ownership structure, data practices in China, and whether he could say anything at all without consulting ByteDance’s mysterious powers-that-be who always remain just offstage in such dramas. Chew, for his part, repeated that TikTok’s headquarters are in Singapore and that ByteDance is 60 percent owned by global investors, statements that Congress treated with roughly the same trust one would reserve for an unfamiliar magician describing how the rabbit got in the hat.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the committee chair, declared TikTok “an extension of the Chinese Communist Party” which, taken literally, would make Chew the least covert operative in modern espionage history. Meanwhile, Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. accused TikTok of failing to adequately police its content, asking why it had not yet implemented every tool imaginable to filter for inappropriate content. Presumably, he is not a regular user of YouTube, Facebook or the internet more generally.
“We continue to invest in trust and safety,” Chew insisted, as a row of lawmakers looked on skeptically, apparently unconvinced that investments in trust are earning the returns they hoped.
Of course, the real plot twist is that while many in Congress would like to pack TikTok’s things into a very slow boat to somewhere far from American teenagers, the app remains wildly popular with the 18-to-29 demographic that every election strategist refers to in hushed tones as “the future.” TikTok users, for their part, took the hearing as content fodder, with clips of the testimony already spreading like wildfire on the very platform lawmakers are trying to wrangle. It is a bit like trying to put out a fire with gasoline, if the gasoline is also monetized.
For now, TikTok remains fully operational, its executives still firmly entrenched in the tedious business of trying to satisfy both algorithm and congressional oversight, which is a bit like trying to please two bosses who both hate each other and speak different languages while you answer emails blindfolded.
In the end, Chew left with fewer answers resolved and lawmakers left with more viral soundbites to post on the platform they claim to distrust, which really says more about the internet than any hearing ever could.
Coming soon to your feed: democracy, but with filters.