TikTok is fighting to keep its app in the US

In Defense of the ByteDance App: The Biden Administration Sents Concerns a New Data Security Model for the United States

In his testimony to Congress, the CEO of TikTok said that ByteDance isn’t an agent of any country. He laid out TikTok’s new data security model, where American users’ data is being stored by American tech company Oracle. I agree with the Biden administration about the fact that internal data controls are very difficult to build and trust.

The movement to ban the app has grown more vociferous following revelations of ByteDance employees repeatedly accessing the data of US users over the last few years.

If the government had access tosensitive personal data about 1 million US citizens, the bill would make a formal process for them to disrupt, prevent, prohibit, investigate or otherwise mitigate services they deem threatening. That could possibly mean forcing American companies to cut ties with TikTok or similar entities. The bill gives the Commerce secretary a few lesser tools, like the ability to force companies to give up services, to deal with risky transactions.

The proposed legislation would “block and prohibit all transactions” in the United States by social media companies with at least one million monthly users that are based in, or under the “substantial influence” of, countries that are considered foreign adversaries, including China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela.

As a political statement, a ban on government devices also represents low-hanging fruit for policymakers who have legal authority over official devices and don’t have to worry about consumer backlash that might result from a broader ban.

The saga of TikTok’s struggles in Washington is nearing a conclusion. As the company’s CEO testifies in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday, two widely different visions of the company will be on display.

State and Federal Government Security Plans for the Internet of Things: A Primer on China’s Information Security Problem & Implications for the Security of the United States

The agreement under review will address security concerns raised at both the federal and state levels, Oberwetter said. “These plans have been developed under the oversight of our country’s top national security agencies, and we are in the process of implementing them to further secure our platform in the United States.”

A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.

Government officials are worried about its widespread usage. In November, FBI Director Christopher Wray raised eyebrows after he told lawmakers that the app could be used to control users’ devices.

The Senate-passed bill would provide exceptions for “law enforcement activities, national security interests and activities, and security researchers.”

TikTok is used by more than 100 million monthly users in the US alone, and it’s ability to produce instant viral hits has put it at the forefront of internet culture despite concerns about data security.

There is a global struggle to gather and control information. Even though it is an important one, Washington has blinded it to the bigger game by focusing on one piece.

“We’ve consistently seen that the Chinese government use whatever tools it can to get information, get data that is going to be advantageous to its aims around the world,” Trudeau told CNN’s Paula Newton in an exclusive interview on Thursday. The Communist Party of China can answer to companies that are Chinese owned or Chinese directed.

The ByteDance Challenge is Not a Barrier Between China or the United States: A Commentary by Zi Chew on TikTok

The ban on federal government devices is anIncremental restriction because the attempts to implement it lacked political will or courts stopped them.

“I think some concern about TikTok is warranted,” said Julian McAuley, a professor of computer science at the University of California San Diego, who noted that the main difference between TikTok and other social media apps is that TikTok is much more driven by user-specific recommendations.

“Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country,” Zi Chew will say, according to written testimony released by the House committee on Tuesday night.

He said that while social media companies are harvesting all kinds of data about users, it’s usually overblown to what extent they know about users.

The messaging campaign has only ramped up this week ahead of the hearing. TikTok rolled out refreshed Community Guidelines for content, which the company framed as being “based on our commitment to uphold human rights and aligned with international legal frameworks.” As always, Chew stressed TikTok’s independence from China.

The committee is likely to approve of the steps that TikTok has taken to make sure that there is a barrier between Beijing and the U.S.

secretive and happen behind closed doors. It is not clear when the committee might finish its investigation, nor is it known which way it is leaning.

I’m Proving the United States is Protecting You from the Chinese Government: Implications for Data Privacy in Mobile Apps and App Stores

At least 14 states have recently banned the app from being used on government devices, while some state-run public universities blocked or banned the app from their campuses.

This is in part because Byte Dance is required by Chinese law to assist the government, which could include sharing user data from anywhere in the world.

But for others, it won’t move the needle. Some legislators do not care about what ads TikTok is taking out or what promises it is making in regards to data privacy. They see a risk of the Chinese government gaining access to data and influencing content, so they’re going to push for a complete ban.

“It certainly makes sense, then, for U.S. soldiers to be told, ‘Hey, don’t use the app because it might share your location information with other entities,” said Chander. “But that’s true of the weather app and other apps that are on your phone, whether they’re owned by China or not.”

A federal privacy law would also discourage mobile phone networks, adtech companies and data brokers from selling the exact kinds of data that TikTok could provide to the Chinese authorities. Any fair mechanism to address TikTok’s risks should apply to American companies selling data internationally or US intelligence services.

If the Chinese intelligence sector wanted to get information on state employees in the US, it wouldn’t have to go through TikTok.

“It’s always easy – and this happens across the world – to say that a foreign government is a threat, and ‘I’m protecting you from that foreign government,’ he says. We should be cautious about how politicized that can be, in order to achieve political ends, because it can be far over the actual threat.

What Should We Expect to Learn About Tik Tok’s Communications? The Role of Lobbying, Policy Questions and the U.S. Constitution

Calo asserts that banning a communication platform would raise First Amendment concerns, despite the fact that they are skeptical that an actual TikTok ban would gain much political traction. The conversation could push policy in the positive direction for Americans according to Calo.

“I think that we’re right in the United States to be finally thinking about the consequences of having so much commercial surveillance taking place of U.S. citizens and residents,” he said. “And we should do something to address it, but not in this ad hoc posturing way, but by passing comprehensive privacy rules or laws, which is something that, for example, the Federal Trade Commission seems very interested in doing.”

But it isn’t just lobbying that has made some of these bills difficult to pass. It is more difficult to impose sweeping regulations on a single industry than it is to pass a legislation about how the US government handles its own technology.

The stark difference between the two shows how simple narratives, well-funded lobbying and genuine policy questions can make or break a bill. It also hints at how a select few Big Tech companies continue to maintain their dominance in the market and their centrality in the lives of countless US households.

The members seemed particularly interested in TikTok’s relationship with China. That makes sense. China is an authoritarian capitalist state where the government will happily exert influence to build profit but where it also has undue influence over the companies that base their operations there. If China were to gain access to Tik Tok data, it could affect other countries where Byte Dance is located, such as Meta and Google.

Big Tech, Big Tech: How ByteDance and Meta Lobbying Spent The Night before Congress Passed the House-Debt Antitrust Term

Beckerman said a lot of the concerns were overblown and that they can be solved through the government negotiations.

The transparency group OpenSecrets obtained public records showing ByteDance spent $270,000 on lobbying in 2019. By the end of last year, its lobbyist count had more than doubled and the company had spent nearly $5.2 million on lobbying.

Last year Meta spent up to 20 million dollars on internet industry lobbying. Next was Amazon at $19 million, then Google at almost $10 million. Combined, that’s roughly $49 million in lobbying — almost 10 times what was spent by TikTok’s parent, which nevertheless clocked in at number four on the list.

For much of this year, supporters of AICOA insisted the legislation had enough votes to pass, and they called on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to bring it to a floor vote. But between intense tech lobbying and doubts about whether the bill did in fact have the votes, it never received the floor time its supporters wanted. It was the same fate as other tech-focused antitrust bills that would have forced Apple to allow users to download iPhones from any website, not just its app store.

The bill that would have forced news organizations to pay for their ad space on platforms such as Meta was passed briefly this month. But the legislation stumbled after Meta warned it could have to drop news content from its platforms altogether if the bill passed.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/22/tech/washington-tiktok-big-tech/index.html

Tech Tech Laws: State vs. State: Implications for Media and Communications Students in 21st Century Tech Scenarios

Silicon Valley’s biggest players have succeeded in Washington many times in defending their turf against the lawmakers who want to take it away.

By contrast, decisions about the rules government might impose on tech platforms have called into question how those regulations may affect different parts of the economy, from small businesses to individual users to the future of the internet itself.

In some cases, as with proposals to revise the tech industry’s decades-old content moderation liability shield, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, legislation may raise First Amendment issues as well as partisan divisions. Section 229 gives social media companies the right to take down offensive content if they want, and Democrats have said that should be changed.

The cross-cutting politics, technical challenges, and potential consequences for the economy of messing up have combined to make it difficult for lawmakers to reach an accord.

Social media research and teaching have become staples in academia and higher education curriculums. The app has fundamentally changed the nature of modern communication with its aesthetics, practices, storytelling, and information-sharing.

If we can’t teach a pillar of the modern media landscape, how are media and communications professors supposed to prepare students to be savvy content creators and consumers? Students can still access TikTok in their homes, but professors don’t have the option of putting it in PowerPoint or using a classroom web browser. The professors will no longer be able to train their students in the best practices of best practices for brands and companies that use TikTok. Students can see what’s going on in real time with TikTok, as parts of the world can be more accessible.

The world keeps turning as these states implement their bans, leaving their citizens disadvantaged in a fast-paced media world. Additionally, media and communications students in the states will be at a disadvantage in applying for jobs, showcasing communicative and technical mastery, and brand and storytelling skills, as their peers from other states will be able to receive education and training.

Professors also must do research. Social media scholars in these states quite literally cannot do what they have been hired to do and be experts in if these bans persist. While university compliance offices have said the bans may only be on campus Wi-Fi and mobile data is still allowed, who will foot that bill for one to pay for a more expensive data plan on their phone? No one is the answer. While working at home does remain an option, professors are also employees who are expected to be on campus regularly to show they are in fact working. It is possible for a social media professor to research TikTok on campus but will have to use mobile data instead, which is expensive and can be accidentally going over one’s limits.

In his TikTok video on Tuesday, Chew made a direct appeal to users. The CEO asked them to write in the comments section what they want their representatives to know about TikTok.

Earlier this month, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was reportedly considering offering a bill to ban a broader “category of applications” that could be applied to other apps that pose security risks, according to Axios.

The app, owned by ByteDance, Inc., has been under fire since the Trump administration, when the former president signed an executive order to enforce a nationwide ban of the app, but ByteDance sued and it never went through.

In a letter to the companies’ chief executives, the senator demanded that they immediately take TikTok out of their app stores.

The CEO of a D.C.-based research firm that was invited to be briefed on the project told us that it was life or death for TikTok. The people are doing everything they can at the problem.

While national security was expected to be the primary focus of the hearing, multiple lawmakers also highlighted concerns about TikTok’s impact on children.

Apple’s Data: Preferences and Threats for the U.S., China, and the e+e- Interaction

Unlike Google, Apple has a lot to lose regarding its relationship with both the US and China. Much of Cook’s success at Apple can be attributed to his ability to maintain working relationships with the Chinese government and manufacturers.

The company has previously said that it welcomes “the opportunity to set the record straight about TikTok, ByteDance, and the commitments we are making.”

“We hope that by sharing details of our comprehensive plans with the full Committee, Congress can take a more deliberative approach to the issues at hand,” the TikTok spokesperson added.

“If you’re certainly willing to fly a balloon over your continental airspace—and have people see it with a naked eye—what would make you not weaponize data? Or use an app that’s on the phone of 60 million Americans to drive narratives in society that try to influence political debate in this country?” says Senate Intelligence Committee vice chair Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida.

“There’s no question about the fact that they are trying to gather as much data as they can about all aspects of our country, and even the most minuscule, small items can add up to providing them with more data,” says Republican senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota. It is the small pieces that add up as much as a huge amount of data will never be touched. They are working it. They are patient. They clearly see us as a threat and they are collecting data.

The efforts were not relevant to the concerns of Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat from Colorado.

Bipartisan bipartisan bill to ban Chinese technology and its consequences for the U.S. intelligence apparatus, as discussed in Nakasone’s statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee

“It’s not only the fact that you can influence something, but you can also turn off the message as well when you have such a large population of listeners,” Gen. Paul Nakasone said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The status has been debated in public in a way that ignores the facts of the agreement as well as what we have achieved already. We will continue to do our part to deliver a comprehensive national security plan for the American people,” Brooke Oberwetter from TikTok said in statement.

A bipartisan Senate bill that Virginia Democrat Mark Warner and South Dakota Republican John Thune are expected to unveil on Tuesday would give the Commerce Department authority to develop “mitigation measures,” up to and including a ban, to meet the risk posed by foreign-linked technologies.

Like the US government push to ban hardware and other gear made by Huawei, another Chinese technology giant, US officials are often short on specifics when asked to show public proof of collusion between the Chinese government and ByteDance.

“People are always looking for the smoking gun in these technologies,” NSA Cybersecurity Director Rob Joyce told reporters in December. “I characterize it much more as a loaded gun.”

TikTok has 7,000 American employees, which is less than the 10,000 or more that the company intended for in 2020 but a big leap over the 1,400 US employees that year.

Republican Rep. Michael McCaul has called TikTok a “spy balloon in your phone,” and fellow Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher has called TikTok “digital fentanyl.”

There are increasing concerns in Washington about China’s intelligence capabilities, especially the spy balloon drama and TikTok, and they were going to spill over into a meeting on Friday between Biden and Trudeau.

The rise of TikTok, a social media platform that promotes bullying, self harming, and eating disorders: the case of Shou Chew

At the recent hearing, several representatives, including Democrat Frank Melone of New Jersey, cited research that shows TikTok pushes content harmful to children and teens. A research paper from the Center for Countering Digital Hate shows that the platform pushes self harming and eating disorders content to children and adolescents at a rate of 2.6 and 8 minutes per minute, respectively. TikTok is a popular platform with many young users. The study found that 67 percent of teens said they used the app.

At the Harvard Business Review conference earlier this month, a man named Shou Chew tried to save his company by talking about emotional intelligence and corporate leadership.

Since taking over as the head of TikTok, Chew has largely stayed out of the public eye but this week he appeared in a video on the corporate account to highlight the app’s huge reach and he revealed it has more than one million users.

A press conference is planned for Wednesday with dozens of social media creators on the steps of the Capitol, some of whom have been flown out there by TikTok. The company is paying for a blitz of advertisements for a Beltway audience. And last week it put out a docuseries highlighting American small business owners who rely on the platform for their livelihoods.

Chew’s company was independent and not connected to either the Chinese government or the Communist Party. Despite not having evidence or proof to back their claims of interference from Beijing, the lawmakers say they do not believe him.

The Times of Democracy: TikTok and the Bipartisan Decree on the U.S. Small Business Owners and Creators

TikTok recently set a default one-hour daily screen time limit on every account for users under 18 in one of the most aggressive moves yet by a social media company to prevent teens from endlessly scrolling. The feature that was rolled out was meant to give more information to users about why it recommends certain videos. There will be more transparency from the company.

The series spotlighted inspiring stories of American small business owners and creators. The first of the 60-second clips features a Mississippi soap maker with a deep Southern accent who built her company on the app, and the second features an educator who quit his job to focus on sharing informational videos on TikTok aimed at teaching toddlers how to read.

The list of expected attendees includes a disabled Asian american creator using her platform to fight ableism, a small business owner from South Carolina who launched a greeting card company via TikTok and an Ohio-based chef who built her bakery business via the app. Some of the creators have hundreds of thousand or even millions of followers on TikTok.

Sherman is skeptical about how persuasive the PR push will be because of how split Washington is.

Lindsay Gorman, a senior fellow for emerging technologies at the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy and a former Biden administration adviser, said that “by and large, TikTok’s lobbying efforts so far have been pretty ineffective.”

Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, the top Democrat in the new House Select Committee on China, says that the issue has gotten more attention.

The hearing began with a lawmaker urging the government to stop the app from being used in the United States. It gave a glimpse into the fight between the company and Washington over the video app and the bipartisan push to crack down on it.

Washington Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, opened Thursday’s hearing by telling Shou: “Your platform should be banned.”

The company was not an arm of the Chinese government, so much of Chew’s attempts to stress that appeared to fall on deaf ears. Numerous members of Congress interrupted the chief executive’s testimony to say they simply don’t believe him.

“I have looked in — and I have seen no evidence of this happening,” Chew responded. “Our commitment is to move their data into the United States, to be stored on American soil by an American company, overseen by American personnel. The risk of that would be the same as any government going to an American company.

“We are committed to be very transparent with our users about what we collect,” Chew said. “I don’t believe what we collect is more than most players in the industry.”

Rep. Bob Latta, a user of TikTok, says he’s “not Chinese”: “You didn’t tell me that I was Chinese,” said Rep. Chew

According to research, TikTok recommends videos to teens that create and cause feelings of emotional distress such as suicide, self-harm and eating disorders.

Rep. Bob Latta, a Republican from Ohio, accused TikTok of promoting a video on the so-called “blackout challenge” or choking challenge to the feed of a 10-year-old girl from Pennsylvania, who later died after trying to mimic the challenge in the video.

There is a lack of appropriate content moderation, which leaves room for young people to be exposed to content that promotes self harm, said the Republican congressman from Florida.

The congressman from California compared the responses to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg who in his own testimony in the past has also frustrated some members of Congress, to what he saw as Chew’s indirect responses.

“You have been one of the few people to unite this committee,” Cárdenas told Chew. “You remind me a lot of Mark Zuckerberg. I told my staff he reminded them of Fred Astaire, who was a good dancer with words. And you are doing the same today. A lot of your answers are a bit nebulous; they’re not yes or no.”

The 40-year-old Harvard-educated Chew was never going to get a warm welcome from US lawmakers. That much had been telegraphed ahead of Thursday’s hearing in the clearest possible manner. Over the last week Chew spent hours and hours preparing for his first testimony before US lawmakers, which was due to the fact he would be received with a cold reception.

The hearing was just weird, brutal, and irrational, as they were obsessed with communism, frequently condescending, and assumed that Chew was Chinese despite his reminders. And users on TikTok took notice.

When Social Media Meets Wall Street, IT and Data Security: The TikTok Chief Executive’s Orphans Uncovered by Tech Misinformation and Technoilliteracy

“Broadly speaking, some transactions can present data security risks — including providing a foreign person or government with access to troves of Americans’ sensitive personal data as well as access to intellectual property, source code, or other potentially sensitive information,” a Department spokesperson said. Preserving the protection of national security, including to prevent the misuse of data through espionage, tracking, and other means that threaten national security, will be ensured by the CFIUS on a case-by-case basis.

“I think a lot of risks that are pointed out are hypothetical and theoretical risks,” Chew said. I don’t have any evidence. I am hoping that we can talk about evidence and then deal with the concerns that are being raised.

That was the question that was asked of Congress, Wall Street, and the public after social media company’s chief executive waffled forhours before US lawmakers on Thursday.

But it was striking how the TikTok chief flailed under aggressive questioning from both Republicans and Democrats, uniting the parties in a way that is rarely ever seen in American politics anymore. “Mr. Chew, welcome to the most bipartisan committee in Congress,” Republican Rep. Buddy Carter said. Democratic Rep. Tony Cárdenas echoed, “You have been one of the few members to unite this committee.”

To be clear, quite a few members of Congress were simply not interested in the facts. They were never going to be moved by anything Chew said. They had their talking points and were going to use them during their allotted time. They couldn’t care less about technical talk related to routing server traffic through Oracle. It was not going to have an effect on the way they behaved.

It is thought that a Congressional hearing will get people mad and force the political capital to push through the bills you have written. Congress looked out of touch yesterday because they just looked like dumbass. Users of TikTok lost whatever political capital they hoped to gain. Representatives lectured people over the dangers of the app, but then wrapped it up in nonsense and tech illiteracy to make them look like orphans to their audience.

The Times of China: Alex Stamos, CEO, Chief Information Officer, Stanford Internet Observatory, Inc. News & Views on CNN and TikTok

Alex Stamos is one of the founding partners of the Krebs Stamos Group as well as the founder and director of the Cardinal Internet Observatory. Alex was the chief security officer at Facebook and the chief information security officer at Yahoo, before launching the SIO. The views are of his own. Read more opinion on CNN.

To the young people around the world who spend hours per day watching the pithy, entertaining short videos, TikTok is the product that won their attention with an almost creepily smart discovery algorithm and a carefully cultivated community of top creators.

We are clearly at the start of a long struggle between the world’s democracies and a new coalition of autocracies, led by a Chinese Communist Party that is emerging from the Covid-19 crisis with its most autocratic leader since Mao Zedong and a burning desire to demonstrate the power of the People’s Republic domestically and abroad.

The visit of the Chinese president to Putin highlighted the new role the Chinese leader wants to play and he also legitimized the Russian president who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. In the South China Sea, Taiwan Strait and Japanese waters, China continues to push boundaries and prepare for conflicts with its neighbors and the West.

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle brought up the notion that the Chinese platform could be used to gather intel on millions of Americans. The members were concerned that Chinese-made information or content could suppress the principles of political freedom and human rights in the United States, creating confusion and false narratives about America’s foreign policy.

It turns out that there is no US law clearly governing the access that Beijing or Moscow-based employees of any tech or social media company have to the personal data of US citizens that use their services. And, there is currently no federal law discouraging the overcollection of critical data or personally identifiable information.

Congress can also set a legal floor to the transparency social networks provide to civil society and academic researchers around the public content they are carrying. These groups work with American social media companies to find and analyze campaign that manipulates both American and global politics, playing an important role in telling citizens and journalists of the kinds of campaigns that may target them.

The company does keystroke logging to identify bots, not to track what users say, according to Chew at the hearing. He repeatedly pointed out that TikTok does not collect more user data than most of its peers.

The U.S. Government Needs to Address Chinese-Style Censorship: A Case Study of the TikTok In-App Browser

The United States needs to seriously engage in the information war and protect and support journalists who operate independently of any government while also building civil societies that can counter the Chinese-style censorship that is invading countries such as India and Turkey.

Washington is correct to deal with the immediate risks posed by the single chess piece of TikTok, but it should also see the whole board and plan for the next 20 moves. The history of the rest of the 21st century depends on it.

Legal experts from the west said the laws in question were very broad and that they required citizens in China to cooperate with the state intelligence work.

Chew, in a rare moment of apparent frustration, told lawmakers at the hearing that TikTok and Citizen Lab were really saying a version of the same thing. He said that the Citizen Lab couldn’t prove a negative, which he tried to do for the last four hours.

TikTok has faced claims that its in-app browser tracks its users’ keyboard entries, and that this type of conduct, known as keylogging, could be a security risk. The privacy researcher who performed the analysis last year, Felix Krause, said that keylogging is not an inherently malicious activity, but it theoretically means TikTok could collect passwords, credit card information or other sensitive data that users may submit to websites when they visit them through TikTok’s in-app browser.

“We have to trust that those companies are doing the right thing with the information and access we’ve provided them,” said Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, a longtime ethical hacker and Twitter’s former head of security who turned whistleblower. We probably shouldn’t. This comes down to a concern about governance.

Lin told CNN that TikTok and other social media companies’ appetite for data highlights policy failures to pass strong privacy laws that regulate the tech industry writ large.

China is being increasingly viewed as antithetical to America’s way of life and as a rising threat to US security and economic dominance, even as the Soviet Union was, according to a grilling of TikTok’s CEO.

The recent sequence of events that made the long anticipated clash between the United States and China a reality for millions of Americans has been the result of the hearing.

The issue of opposition to China is one of the most important organizing principles in Washington politics and is a cause that both the Democrats and Republicans agree on. But the tone of some of the questions and the disrespect shown to Chew also explained why some Asian American groups are worried that fierce hostility toward Beijing in Washington could translate into more intimidation and violence against Asian Americans across the country.

This is a propaganda machine and it can be used that way. This is a misinformation machine. It is possible, if the President of China wants to invade Taiwan, that many people will see a propaganda video that reinforces that message.

He opened a packet of notes and diligently looked at them while sitting on the Energy and Commerce Committee. Many of the lawmakers who would be questioning him were already making up their minds over the safety of the app, and so the sheet in the packet seemed to match their names and faces.

What Will Users Follow When You’re Going To Snapchat? An Investor’s Perspective on a Social Media Data Privacy Ban after the Cambridge Analytica Case

Facebook agreed to pay the Federal Trade Commission 5 billion dollars in the Cambridge Analytica case. The scandal kickstarted legislative debate over a federal data privacy network. Congress has yet to approve any meaningful data protections for social media companies.

If a ban is approved and enforced, the content, user count and engagement, and probably ad dollars will increase, according to an analyst at the financial services firm.

One company is already receiving a boost. Snap’s stock rose in the days leading up to TikTok’s appearance before Congress amid renewed talks among federal officials of a TikTok ban.

If that happens, Lian Jye Su, an analyst with ABI Search, believes users will follow their favorite TikTok influencers and content creators wherever they go.

Su said most users will flock to where the content creators go next. “Instagram, Snapchat, and Youtube Shorts stand to benefit the most as content creators will still prefer places where they can monetize their content.”

Smaller platforms have an opportunity to move forward, too. Triller, which has over 450 million users, is actively courting popular TikTok creators with cash bonuses, partnerships and other incentives to switch platforms. Dubsmach and Clash are other platforms that could be appealing to creators.

“For Snap, which has a weaker network effect than Meta, a possibly more trusted US TikTok may make it more difficult to attract users away from or keep them from migrating to TikTok,” Moghaharbi wrote in the investor’s note.

Why aren’t millions of people in the US complaining about tech laws and data privacy? An analysis of TikTok, an app that tracks eye movement

China retaliated against its own citizens. Fan Bingbing, the famous actress who was accused of failing to pay enough taxes, vanished just like Jack Ma did when he spoke out against tech regulation.

They were not fans. The app has been flooded with videos (which TikTok itself could very well be boosting) of users mocking Congress, supporting Chew and TikTok, and pointing out the flagrant hypocrisy of Congress’s decision to target TikTok while ignoring the equally egregious abuse of data and algorithms by its American competitors. TikTok might drive dangerous challenges embraced by teens, but I don’t think it’s incited a genocide as Meta has.

Nearly every Congressional hearing on Big Tech, whether about data privacy, monopolies, or national security, inevitably features a lawmaker complaining about something along the lines of, “But think of the children!”

“Without legally mandated safety by design, transparency, and accountability, the algorithm will continue to put vulnerable users at risk,” Callum Hood, head of research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said in a press statement. “Congress owes it to America’s parents today to get answers.”

Students at Denver’s East High School fled their classrooms during a school shooting, just hours before Chew sat under congressional questioning. Earlier this year, a pandemic-era program offering free school lunches for all children expired, reverting to an income-based system that will introduce more barriers for children who need it the most. Nearly one-third of children in the US live in poverty, largely thanks to deeply entrenched issues of economic inequality and an eroding social safety net.

A caption about a clip of US Rep. Buddy Carter, who represents Georgia’s 1st district, asking if the app tracks eye movement is saying that there needs to be an age limit in Congress.

Chew responded by saying the app does not use body, face or voice data to identify users, and the only face data the app collects is for “filters to have sunglasses on your face.”

‘Why do you need to know where the eyes are if you’re not dilated?’ – Rep. Richard Hudson

‘Why do you need to know where the eyes are if you’re not seeing if they’re dilated?” Carter asked and was met with a lot of comments ridiculing the congressman.

Many of the TikTok video clips suggested Congress members don’t know how modern technology works. They think members of Congress don’t know how tech companies work in their own country because they’re detached from technology.

It’s a bipartisan opinion. The app has Chinese owners and the administration was threatening a ban if they didn’t spin off their social media platform.

One of the clips that has been widely circulating on the app is a question by US Rep. Richard Hudson, who represents the 9th district of North Carolina. The user was not happy with the “yes or no” style of questioning on subjects that were very complex or irrelevant.