Senators are worried that the next US bank run might be rigged

Do we really see Chinese influence in TikTok, a social media app whose users do not see it? The bipartisan debate in the United States

There have also been a number of studies that report TikTok is tracking users around the internet even when they are not using the app. The studies have shown that Tiktok can track visitors to third-party websites. The company said it uses the data to bolster its advertising business. And in this respect, TikTok is not unique: the same tool is used by US tech giants including Facebook-parent Meta and Google on a far larger scale, according to Malwarebytes, a leading cybersecurity firm.

The movement to ban the app grew after it was revealed that employees at ByteDance had accessed US users’ data many times over the last few years.

It will do little to stop the growth of Chinese surveillance and influence if the US decides to ban or sell TikTok, regardless of how the US decides to move forward.

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.

In a matter of days, the United States is expected to ban federal employees from downloading or using TikTok on government-issued phones or tablets, marking the country’s broadest crackdown on the short-form video app to date.

One reason the discussions have lagged is a split in the White House. Some senior national security officials are pushing for an agreement that forces TikTok to fully separate from its Beijing parent company ByteDance. The new safeguards that TikTok is implementing are enough to alleviate concerns about Chinese influence according to others.

McQuaide said that they would continue to brief members of congress on the plans that have been developed under the oversight of our country’s top national security agencies.

TikTok: Bringing Information to the Foreground: Commentary on the Top US Diplomat on the Issues of the Social Media Landscape

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

The top US diplomat said he believed the app is a threat to US national security, but would not outright say that it should be banned. “Clearly, we, the administration and others are seized with the challenge that it poses and are taking action to address it,” he said.

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

But while legislators are working to limit TikTok, Berkman acknowledges how difficult it would be to get users off the app. More than one billion users visit the site each month, according to the app.

“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. “And we’ve also seen that Chinese owned or Chinese directed companies are very much answerable to the Communist Party of China.”

Efforts to ban federal government devices have not advanced due to lack of political will or courts intervening to stop 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.

Can the App be Owned by a Chinese Government? An Analysis of ByteDance’s Privacy Concerns about the American-owned Video App

It is difficult to determine whether or not ByteDance maintains operations in the US separately, since that is the only way to find out.

But it was not lost on Chew that American companies have made similar mistakes in the past. “With a lot of respect, American social companies don’t have a good track record with data privacy and user security,” Chew said. Just look at the two, for one example.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a powerful interagency federal panel that reviewing foreign investment in the U.S., began examining TikTok during the Trump administration and the probe is still underway.

The committee is satisfied with how TikTok handles user data and employees in Beijing and the Chinese government.

secretive and occur behind closed doors. It is not clear when the committee will finish it’s work, or whether it’s leaning either way.

Canadian Treasury Board President Mona Fortier said the federal government will also block the app from being downloaded on official devices in the future.

Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country. However… you don’t simply have to take my word on that. We’ve worked with both the U.S. government and Oracle to come up with solutions to address concerns about TikTok’s heritage.

The question is whether you can design a service like Tiktok that is owned by a Chinese government, in a way that protects it from China’s demands. And I’m not sure that anything we saw on site there this week really spoke to that.”

“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. That is true of the weather app, as well as a lot of other apps that are also owned by China, or not.

If a ban of TikTok were to be enacted, it would solve our national security concerns about the Chinese-owned video app. But such a ban might ultimately put our national security at greater risk. It would sidestep a bigger problem, our nation’s failure to address concerns over the huge amount of personal data gathered in our digital lives, especially when that data could be used by foreign adversaries.

“The truth of the matter is, if the sophisticated Chinese intelligence sector wanted to gather information on particular state employees in the United States, it wouldn’t probably 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. “And I think we should be a little cautious about how that can be politicized in a way that far exceeds the actual threat in order to achieve political ends.”

The Tech Giant Attacks on the Tea Party: Do U.S. Intellectual Property and Privacy Laws Need to End? Commentary on Chander, Calo, and Schumer

Both Chander and Calo are skeptical that an outright TikTok ban would gain much political momentum, and both argue that even if it were to move forward, banning a communication platform would raise First Amendment concerns. But Calo believes the conversation could push policy in a positive direction for Americans.

He thinks that the United States is now thinking about what will happen to citizens because of the amount of commercial surreptitious activity. “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 in fast-tracking the bill, Congress can’t help but draw attention to its notable lack of progress on regulating American tech giants more broadly — despite years of reports, hearings and proposed legislation.

The tech industry’s largest players have come under fire in the past. From knee-capping nascent rivals; to harming children and mental health; to undermining democracy; to spreading hate speech and harassment; to censoring conservative viewpoints; to bankrupting local news outlets; Big Tech has been made out as one of Washington’s largest villains.

US officials have raised concerns that China could use its laws to pressure TikTok or ByteDance to hand over US user data that could be used for intelligence or disinformation purposes.

“We think a lot of the concerns are maybe overblown,” Beckerman told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday, “but we do think these problems can be solved” through the ongoing government negotiations.

ByteDance had 17 lobbyists who spent $270,000 on lobbying, according to public records obtained by the transparency group Open Secrets. The company spent more than $5 million on lobbying last year, which more than doubled from the year before.

Meta was the biggest internet industry lobbying giant last year, spending upward of $20 million. Then was Amazon with $19 million followed by GOOGLE at almost $10 million. The parent of TikTok spent less than a million dollars on lobbying, but the combined amount was nearly ten times what was spent.

For much of the year, AICOA supporters insisted the legislation had enough votes in the Senate to be passed and called on 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. One bill that would have forced Apple to allow users to download iPhone apps from any website not only its own app store was thrown out.

The bill that could force news organizations to pay a larger share of ad revenues was expected to pass in the next few days. If the bill passed, Meta would have to remove news content from its platforms.

Keeping the Tech Out of the Dark: Students Can’t Learn to Take Back the Stupidity Out of Silicon Valley, Or Should Technology Students Be Proactive?

Time and again, Silicon Valley’s biggest players have maneuvered expertly in Washington, defending their turf from lawmakers keen to knock them down a peg.

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.

Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act may have First Amendment issues as well as partisan divisions, and that is why they are proposed to revise the tech industry’s decades-old content moderation liability shield. Democrats have said Section 230 should be changed because it gives social media companies a pass to leave some hate speech and offensive content unaddressed, while Republicans have called for changes to the law so that platforms can be pressured to remove less content.

The cross-cutting politics and the technical challenges of regulating an entire sector of technology, not to mention the potential consequences for the economy of screwing it up, have combined to make it genuinely difficult for lawmakers to reach an accord.

It’s crucial to establishing a Republican brand. A central tenet of what unites Republicans now is taking a strong stance [and] standing up to China,” says Thad Kousser, professor of political science at U.C. San Diego.

Social media has become a staple in the higher education curriculum. Modern communication has fundamentally changed thanks to the app.

How do media and communications professors train students to be savvycontent creators and consumers, if they can’t teach a pillar of the modern media landscape? While students can certainly still access TikTok within the privacy of their own homes, professors can no longer put TikToks into PowerPoint slides or show TikTok links via classroom web browser. The use of TikTok will cause professors to be unable to teach their students the best practices of best practices for brands, companies, and novel forms of stories. Additionally, TikTok makes parts of the world more accessible, as students can see the things they are learning about in real time.

The world keeps turning as these states implement their bans, leaving their citizens disadvantaged in a fast-paced media world. As peers from other states will receive education and training, media and communication students in the states will be at a disadvantage when it comes to applying for jobs, as their peers from other states will be able to demonstrate their skills.

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? The answer is no one. While working at home does continue, professors are expected to be there on campus regularly to show that they are working. It will be difficult for a social media professor to do research on TikTok on campus because they have to rely on video streaming using mobile data, which can be expensive, or accidentally exceeding one’s limits.

TikTok: a new social media platform for promoting mental health advice in Britain and the UK: Gabby Beckford and Saman Gonzalez

Gabby Beckford’s plan to visit the British Virgin Islands started with a flurry of searches on what to wear, eat and do in between exploring the islands’ pristine beaches and sapphire waters.

“I don’t wake up in the middle of the night to check it, because I’m on it until the middle of the night,” he says. “If I had to give up all social media and keep one, I’d choose TikTok because it’s the newest, and it’s fascinating to see where this is going.”

To her it’s a one-stop shop for a wide range of content, from mental health advice to product reviews, all presented in bite-sized clips that don’t require plowing through blocks of text.

She has 560,000 TikTok followers, and shares comedy skits and lifestyle content. She uses the platform to make money by partnering with clothing brands and doing political ads – like a get-out-and-vote clip for the recent midterm election.

TikTok is the product that won the attention of young people around the world who spend hours per day watching short videos, because it has a smart discovery mechanism and community of top creators.

Saman Gonzalez uses TikTok to promote her law practice, with 83,000 followers. Her short videos offer a light take on an otherwise heavy subject: In one, an image of her morphs into a fiery superhero who takes flight. The caption says that he is on his way to get his client out of deportation proceedings.

Sometimes, she breaks into dances as informative captions with immigration facts scroll on the screen. The 42-year-old says she has gained some clients by using the app and checks it frequently to stay on top of messages.

It is compatible with my personality. Gonzalez says there are many ways to showcase yourself through the app, whether it be short clips, skits or dances. “And I love spreading information to people while trying to make it fun and entertaining.”

The app is especially popular with young people. An assistant professor of digital culture at Tilburg University in The Netherlands says that Gen Z is the majority of its users.

Research has shown that videos that promote suicide, self- harm and eating disorders, as well as create and perpetuate feelings of emotional distress, are encouraged by TikTok.

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. It rolled out a feature that aimed to offer more information to users about why its powerful algorithm recommends certain videos. And the company pledged more transparency to researchers.

TikTok officials have tried to mitigate those worries by establishing a separate entity that will have independent auditors monitoring the app’s powerful algorithm and data flows. The company has long distanced itself from China, claiming that it is a “global company,” and pointing out that some 60% of ByteDance’s shares are owned by global investors like Carlyle Group, General Atlantic, and Susquehanna International Group.

Chew, a Singaporean who has largely stayed out of the spotlight since taking over TikTok in 2021, recently sat for interviews with multiple US newspapers and this week showed up in a video on the corporate TikTok account to highlight the vast reach of the app, which he revealed now has more than 150 million users in the United States.

“It was the app you could go to and feel that you have the creative freedom to be yourself … goofy, playful with no one judging you,” they said in an email to CNN. “It was the app that in 60 seconds or less allowed the user the opportunity to go viral and become a star – which other platforms did not offer at the time.”

Phillip Calvert, a Milwaukee resident who goes by PhilWaukee on TikTok, downloaded the app when he lived in Shanghai, China, in 2018. He had little choice but to use social media that was blocked in the country.

“People don’t even ask me for my Instagram anymore, they ask me for my TikTok,” he says. The app is an alternative to television for Gen Z, according to Calvert.

The young man, dubbed Calvert, makes money by posting travel videos and other content to TikTok. He said that he earned his first TikTok payment in Black History Month.

The creators agree that they won’t spend much time mourning if they are barred from TikTok. They are going to go to the next social platform.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the CEO of TikTok is going to be questioned by Congress about the safety and security of the popular video app.

According to a report, Senator Mark Warner was considering offering a bill to ban a category of applications that posed security risks.

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.

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) demanded that Apple and Google “immediately” remove TikTok from their app stores in a letter addressed to the companies’ chief executives, Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai, Thursday.

At a media briefing on Tuesday at its Los Angeles office, top TikTok officials described a data security plan, dubbed “Project Texas” because it relies on Austin-based software company Oracle.

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

How China is trying to get its share of the X-ray data from Google, Facebook, Google, Google and other social services: a glimpse from the White House

Unlike Google, Apple has a lot to lose regarding its relationship with both the US and China. Cook has been responsible for much of Apple’s success because of his relationships with the Chinese government and manufacturers.

Some observers expect Washington to take action. Mira Ricardel, a former White House deputy national security adviser with the Chertoff Group, says there will be limitations this year. There is a determination to do something that will lead to it. Here is a picture of what it might look like.

India has a TikTok blockade. NetBlocks shows that there are a few small internet companies that allow access. And Ram Sundara Raman, lead developer for the University of Michigan’s Censored Planet project, says he was able to watch videos during a visit to India using the app he had downloaded in the US. The ban caused many Indian users to switch to rival services such asgoogle and Facebook and caused turmoil for the entrepreneurs who built businesses on TikTok.

Trump’s order would have immediately prohibited app stores from distributing TikTok, and nearly two months later would have barred cloud providers and internet infrastructure services from doing business with the company. People or companies caught dodging the order could have faced fines or prison sentences. “We wanted to start at the root, where it comes into the US, and extract it that way,” says Ivan Kanapathy, who was China director for Trump’s National Security Council and is now vice president at policy consultancy Beacon Global Strategies.

The company recently launched a full-fledged charm offensive that has included rapid-fire meetings in Washington with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, new transparency tools on the app and a first-ever tour to members of the media of its corporate campus in the Los Angeles area.

“There’s a lot of performative action going on,” said Adam Segal, a Chinese technology policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “It’s a desire to show toughness on China,” he said.

What is the Best Way to Trade TikTok with the U.S.? A cybersecurity expert says no guarantees the plan will work in the US

“That’s almost half the US coming to TikTok to connect, to create, to share, to learn, or just to have some fun,” said Chew, wearing in a hoodie and t-shirt like any other American tech executive in the clip. “This comes at a pivotal moment for us. Some politicians have started talking about banning TikTok, now this could take TikTok away from all 150 million of you.”

When Donald Trump pushed to have the TikTok app put out of business in the United States, the company was scrambling to find a cloud server in the U.S.

TikTok said on Tuesday that the USDS would be hiring 2,500 people who have undergone background checks similar to those used by the US government. None of them will be Chinese nationals.

Still, aggregate data, like what kind of content is trending on the app or in what regions certain kind of videos are popular, can be analyzed by corporate employees in Beijing who would need to be granted special permission from the U.S. data security team.

Jim Lewis, a cybersecurity expert, said the plan addresses many of the major security concerns US officials have, but that is no guarantee it will be approved.

“The Oracle plan would work,” Lewis said. It’s standard for this kind of thing. A reasonable solution is not enough as TikTok has become so emotional.

He said a change of ownership didn’t solve anything. General data security, who has access to that data, regardless of legal ownership, is the real issue.

TikTok and the Data Security Project: First Briefing and Sentence Analysis of a Public Hearing at the House of Representatives on Tuesday

Assuming the deal passes muster, though, Segal agreed that it resolves the bulk of the data security concerns by allowing inspections of its algorithm and transferring U.S. user data to Oracle.

Many details about Project Texas have trickled out in the various media but Tuesday’s gathering was the first time the company gave an official briefing on the plan.

The TikTok app will give tours to journalists, lawmakers and civil society groups in order to give a peek at how the app operates, in order to open new centers in Washington, Dublin and Singapore.

Then there was a game of sorts that put people in the position of a TikTok content moderator, where they decided if a video violated TikTok’s rules or not.

Visitors who sign non-disclosure agreements can review TikTok’s entire source code in server rooms, but journalists are not given the chance.

Tech journalist Casey Newton of the newsletter Platformer said the content moderation game brought home just how tricky it is for the thousands of people who have to make trade-offs every day on an endless flood of videos, but it was largely beside the point.

“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? Marco Rubio, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, suggested using an app that was on the phone of 60 million Americans to try to influence political debate in this country.

“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. There is a humongous amount of data that won’t be used and only the small pieces add up. They are working it. They are patient. They are collecting data as they see us as a threat.

“None of the suggested … efforts were particularly relevant to my concerns,” senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat of Colorado, told congressional reporters after hosting Chew in his office last week.

The Status of the Silicon Valley Bank: Sensitivity to Foreign Election Correlations in Mobile Phone Apps and the Cybersecurity Threat to the US

Canada banned all government-issued mobile devices from TikTok on Monday, reflecting concerns in the western world about the Chinese app.

Last week, Canada’s federal privacy watchdog and its provincial counterparts in British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec announced an investigation to delve into whether the app complies with Canadian privacy legislation.

The opposition wants a public inquiry into alleged foreign election interference after recent media reports of potential Chinese interference in the Canadian elections.

Gen Paul Nakasone said that he could turn off the message when there was a large crowd of people listening to it.

The status of our organization has been debated in a way that doesn’t correspond with what we’ve achieved. Brooke Oberwetter said in a statement that they will deliver a comprehensive national security plan for the American people.

The Commerce Department would have the power to developmitigation measures, up to and including a ban, to meet the risk posed by foreign linked technologies under a bipartisan Senate bill to be unveiled on Tuesday.

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.

Rob Joyce, the director of the NSA’s Cybersecurity Division told reporters in December that there was always a demand for a smoking gun in these technologies. I see it as a loaded gun.

One of the senators who want briefings from intelligence officials and tech experts is Kaine, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. These lawmakers fear that US financial institutions could be vulnerable to social-media-induced bank runs and that malicious actors could use misinformation and bots to manipulate public opinion and create chaos in the financial system.

Silicon Valley Bank collapsed earlier in March after it became clear it had made a bad bet on long-dated government debt, which meant it no longer had enough capital to comfortably pay back depositors. Many of its customers were venture capitalists and tech company founders, some of whom spread news (and speculation) on WhatsApp, Slack and social media, driving a panic some analysts and lawmakers think helped accelerate the bank’s demise.

Why social media makes us nervous: a case study of a Silicon-to-Tesla hacking campaign by Sen. Mark Warner and the Intelligence Committee

“I’m nervous,” Kaine says while walking onto the Senate floor, his voice dropping as if he doesn’t want too many people at the Capitol to overhear. “I’m nervous.”

In March of last year, shares in Gamestop, a video game retailer, jumped from $20 to $483 before falling back down, and they were driven by the power of social media. The Securities and Exchange Commission blamed investment forums on Reddit for fueling the episode.

In the past few years members of the Intelligence Committee have received briefings on the potential for manipulating US markets with deepfakes.

The chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Mark Warner, spoke to The Verge on Wednesday about how social media can help foreign influence operations. “I’m not saying that they’re doing it right now. But why would we wait until President Xi and China says, ‘I’m ready to pull the trigger and invade Taiwan’?”

TikTok has 7,000 American employees, which is less than the 10,000 it aimed for in 2020, but it is 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.”

What do creators of tech platforms really need to do when they do? How many American small business owners have an impact on the TikTok app?

Federal officials worry about China’s technological prowess, as tensions between the US and China have been on the rise in recent years. China is conducting military displays in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait, as well as a balloon traversing the U.S.

“I strongly doubt this app will go dark,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi told CNN during a primetime special about TikTok on Thursday. He said that the most likely outcome is a sale.

At a Harvard Business Review conference earlier this month, where executives, professors and artists appeared for talks on corporate leadership and emotional intelligence, Shou Chew attempted to save his company.

It’s a problem if you engage in a campaign against a wildly popular app. Its very engaged users will notice you’re being an asshole! And while Chew certainly didn’t do himself or TikTok a lot of favors yesterday or in the years since Trump first called for a ban, Congress was in rare form.

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.

American small business owners and creators were highlighted in the series. A Mississippi soap maker with a deep Southern accent who builds her company on the app, and an educational professional who quit his job to share information on the TikTok platform are featured in two 60-second clips.

The list of expected attendees includes a disabled Asian American creator using her platform to combat 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. The creators of TikTok have a lot of followers on the site.

TikTok and the China Digital Economy: Where do we stand? How Beijing is planning to respond to China’s criticism of the PR push?

Sherman was skeptical about how persuasive the PR push would be because of the current state of Washington.

According to Lindsay Gorman, a senior fellow for emerging technologies at the German Marshall Fund, TikTok’s lobbying efforts have been pretty ineffectual.

“It’s gotten a lot more attention, so there’s just more awareness of the problem,” says Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, the top Democrat on the new House Select Committee on China.

The Chinese government considers some advanced technology, including content recommendation algorithms, to be critical to its national interest. In December, Chinese officials proposed tightening the rules that govern the sale of that technology to foreign buyers.

“It also seems extremely unlikely that Beijing will accept any deal that removes TikTok’s algorithm[s] from its direct control and regulatory authority,” he said.

Users are believed to be the key to TikTok’s success. The recommendations are based on behavior, meaning that you can push videos you like and want to watch.

State media in China published a commentary from a professor of trade who said the updated rules meant ByteDance would need a license from Beijing to sell its technology.

“Some cutting-edge technologies might impact national security and public welfare, and need to be included in [export control] management,” Cui Fan told Xinhua.

The Chinese Regulator of Digital Media and Traditional Media (Bytedance) argues that the U.S. is not an arm of the Chinese government

A senior official from the Chinese regulator of digital and traditional media visited Bytedance’s offices last week. He urged the company to improve the use of “recommendation algorithms” to spread “positive energy” and strengthen the review of online content, according to a statement from the regulator posted on its website.

At the beginning of 2023, rules governing “deep synthesis algorithms” also took effect. They are going to restrict the use of image, audio and text-generation software. Such technologies help popular apps.

The true test, he said, is whether user data can be effectively ring-fenced and privacy and security can be achieved through data segregation, encryption and other means.

Beijing remains in control over TikTok but Silvers expects both sides to try to get a solution that addresses US concerns.

The hearing, which lasted for more than five hours, kicked off with calls from a lawmaker to ban the app in the United States and remained combative throughout. The company had an uphill battle to improve relations with Washington as a result of bipartisan efforts to crack down on the popular short-form video app.

McMorris-Rodgers said that her platform should be banned. I am expecting you to say anything to avoid this outcome.

Much of Chew’s attempts to stress that his company is not an arm of the Chinese government 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. Any government going to an American company requesting data would have the same risk.

“We are committed to be very transparent with our users about what we collect,” Chew said. We collect less than most players in the industry.

Rep. Cárdenas: Defending TikTok Against the Blackout Challenge [Reply to CNN]

There was an accusation that TikTok promoted a video on the so-called blackout challenge which caused the death of a girl from Pennsylvania.

There is a lack of moderation in the content that young people are exposed to, which leaves room for them to engage in self harm.

He said that it was unacceptable that he would claim that TikTok was grand to behold, even though he had known of the harmful content served to children.

Rep. Tony Cárdenas, a Democrat from California, blasted what he saw as Chew’s indirect responses and compared him to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who in his own testimonies in the past has also frustrated some members of Congress.

Crdenas said that he had been one of the few people to unite the committee. You are very similar to a lot of Mark Facebook. I told my staff that he reminded them of Fred Astaire, a good dancer with words. You are doing the same thing. A lot of your answers are a bit nebulous; they’re not yes or no.”

To prepare for his appearance Thursday, CNN learned Chew has spent the last week in near-dialy, multi-hour prep sessions. TikTok personnel have been working to polish Chew’s presentation. They had prepared him for hours of relentless questioning by playing the roles of lawmakers with various questioning styles.

The exchange after the lengthy critique on TikTok by Rep.kat Cammack summed up Thursday’s hearing.

What the Twitter TikTok Chief Executive (Chernais Chew) said about the Ethics of the Department of Homeland Security and other Cyber Crime Prevention Initiatives

Data security risks include giving a foreign person or government access to a trove of Americans’ sensitive personal data, as well as access to intellectual property, source code, or other potentially sensitive information, according to a department spokesman. On a case by case basis, CiUS will ensure the protection of national security, particularly to prevent misuse of data through espionage, tracking and other means that threaten national security.

“I think a lot of risks that are pointed out are hypothetical and theoretical risks,” Chew said. I haven’t seen any evidence. I am waiting for discussions where we can discuss evidence and address the concerns being raised.

That’s the question coursing through the halls of Congress, Wall Street, and the public writ large after the social media company’s chief executive, Shou Zi Chew, waffled for hours before US lawmakers on Thursday.

It was striking how the TikTok chief fell apart under aggressive questioning from both sides of the aisle, in a way that is typically not seen in American politics anymore. Republican Rep. Buddy Carter welcomed the most bipartisan committee in Congress. You have been one of the few members to unite the committee, said Tony Crdenas.

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 deploy them during their allotted time as cameras were rolling. They couldn’t care less about technical talk related to routing server traffic through Oracle. It was never going to have an impact on how they behaved.

The idea of a Congressional hearing is you get people mad and on your side so you have the political capital to push through whatever bills you’ve written on the matter. Congress looked out of touch yesterday when they just looked like dumbass. They wanted political capital, but it was lost on the users of TikTok. There was a time when representatives lectured users about the dangers of the app, but they wrapped it up in anti-Mexican and tech illiteracy language that made the audience look pathetic.

How Social Media Can Help to End the China-Puzzle Debate: A Case Study on a Facebook, Yahoo and Twitter Account of Covid-19

Alex Stamos is a founding partner of the KrebsStamos Group and a founder and director of theStanford Internet Observatory. Prior to launching KSG and the SIO, Alex served as the chief security officer of Facebook and as the chief information security officer at Yahoo. His views are his own. CNN has an opinion on it.

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.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit this week to a battered, beleaguered Vladimir Putin only highlighted its new role, as the Chinese leader publicly legitimized a Russian president who was indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes only last week. In the South China Sea, Taiwan Strait and disputed Japanese waters, China’s rapidly growing military continues to push boundaries and prepare for conflicts with its neighbors and the West.

China has been motivated by the unrest in Hong Kong and the embarrassing emergence of Covid-19 to improve its influence around the world. The investment has paid off and our team at Stanford considers China to be the leader in this area.

Few members of Congress seemed sympathetic to that argument, though — and it’s the potential for future abuse by foreign actors that has seemingly scared lawmakers most. Congress has introduced data protection bills after American made social network scandals, but was not seen to be doing enough to protect user data.

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 key American social media companies to find and analyze campaigns to manipulate both American and global politics, playing an important role in informing citizens and journalists of the kinds of campaigns that may target them.

TikTok has traditionally made it difficult for researchers to monitor its platform for this kind of manipulation, although in the past several months it has started to address the need for transparency. While US companies are often more transparent than TikTok, that is based only upon their own voluntary decisions. Twitter, long a leader in transparency, recently announced a plan to eliminate the external access that is critical to finding botnets and influence campaigns. The proposed Platform Accountability and Transparency Act would create a fair baseline for all companies and would remove this national security issue from the whims of individual tech billionaires.

The US and our allies need to protect and support journalists who are able to operate independently of any government, and build civil society coalitions to fight Chinese-style censorship that is invading countries such as India and Turkey.

Washington is right to deal with the immediate risks posed by a single chess piece of TikTok but should also plan for the next 20 moves because it should see the whole board. It is the history of the 21st century that depends on it.

TikTok and Citizen Lab: Where are we heading? When are we going to go at it? What will the United States and China do next?

western legal experts say the laws require any organization or citizen in china to help state intelligence work without defining what it means.

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. “Citizen Lab is saying they cannot prove a negative, which is what I’ve been trying to do for the last four hours,” he said.

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.

Peiter “Mud” Zatko is a long time ethical hacker, and former head of security at Twitter. He said that the companies must be sure that they are doing the right thing. “We probably shouldn’t. There is a concern about the ultimate governance of these companies.

Lin told CNN that policies fail to pass strong privacy laws that regulate the tech industry.

The five-hour questioning of TikTok CEO Shou Chew underscored how China is viewed as antithetical to America’s values and way of life as opposed to a rising threat to US security and economic dominance.

Recent events such as the hearing, have made it clear that the United States and China are going to go at it in a battle that millions of Americans think is inevitable.

The hostility of some of the lawmakers illustrated how opposition to China has become one of the dominant organizing principles of Washington politics and a rare issue that unites both parties. 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.

“Number two, this is a powerful propaganda machine if it’s used that way. This is an incredible misinformation, disinformation machine. I’m not saying they’re doing it right now, but that potential, if President Xi in China wants to somehow invade … Taiwan, and suddenly folks not only in America but around the world are starting to see videos that reinforces that kind of message, that is a propaganda tool that makes every other possibility pale.”

He opened a packet of notes when he got to the Energy and Commerce Committee. In the packet, there appeared to be a sheet matching the names and faces of the lawmakers preparing to question him — many of whom had already made up their minds over whether the app was safe for Americans.

How social media giants should move away from TikTok in the wake of the Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, and Snapchat scandals: an investor’s note

The FTC was able to settle the case with Facebook for $5 billion. The scandal kickstarted legislative debate over a federal data privacy network. Congress has yet to approve any data protection for US or foreign owned social media companies.

Many of the largest US social media companies have spent years copying TikTok’s features, which would make a shift away from the platform easier for its creators and users. In 2020, the short-form video tool Reels was introduced by Instagram. Snapchat has Spotlight, YouTube has Shorts and even Spotify has a TikTok-like video feed with recommended music and other content.

According to a recent investor’s note by an analyst, if a ban is approved and enforced, there will likely be more ad revenue for the social media companies.

The company is seeing 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.

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.”

Su said that smaller platforms have the chance to gain ground. Triller has 450 million users and is courting popular content creators from TikTok with cash bonuses, partnerships and other incentives to switch platforms. It’s possible that Dubsmach and Clash are growing in popularity because of their ability to create 21-second looping videos.

“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.

China retaliated against its own citizens: Jack Ma and the tech giant Bingbing eta’s failure to pay enough taxes

China retaliated against its own citizens. Jack Ma disappeared in the style of Fan Bingbing, who failed to pay enough taxes, when she spoke out against tech regulation.