TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said in a TikTok video ahead of Thursday’s testimony before Congress that the video app has more than 150 million users in the United States today, up from 100 million in 2020. announced that there will be 5 million companies in Japan.
Amid talks of banning the ByteDance-owned app over national security concerns amid rising tensions between the United States and China, Chu touts these numbers to remind the app that it is an important part of American culture. It was shown that
“This is nearly half of the US using TikTok to connect and share to learn or just have fun,” he says in the video.
Additionally, the executive used the video to ask TikTok users to defend the app by telling elected representatives what they liked about the app. The company can use these comments as proof of his TikTok popularity.
“I will testify before Congress later this week and share everything we are doing to protect Americans who use the app,” Chu said.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee is going to scrutinize app CEOs over their apps’ privacy practices and how they protect children.
“Americans deserve to know that ByteDance-owned TikTok’s ties to China are jeopardizing their privacy and manipulating their data. Algorithms are also known to exploit children for profit and expose them to dangerous online content. You need to know what actions you take to keep yourself safe from offline harm.
Earlier this month, the US House Foreign Relations Committee voted in favor of a bill that would give the Biden administration the power to ban the app. Meanwhile, authorities are reportedly pressuring ByteDance to sell TikTok or face an embargo because its ties to China concern user data being passed to the Communist Party of China (CCP). The FBI and US Department of Justice have also launched an investigation into TikTok after some employees allegedly used the app to spy on US journalists.
TikTok spent nearly $1.5 billion on a glamorous offensive that included procedures such as an independent audit by Oracle and invitations to media and regulators to visit the newly built Transparency Center in LA. It also shows that the U.S. operations are transparent and separate from the China-based operations.
In the past few weeks, the UK, EU, Canada and New Zealand have all banned TikTok on various types of official government devices, similar to the US ban.
Separately, TikTok today announced a review of its Community Guidelines and a new policy regarding the use of AI in content and climate misinformation. The new rules stipulate that accounts must clearly disclose the use of AI in their videos.
