TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was questioned at a U.S. government hearing on Thursday about the burgeoning social media platform’s relationship with its Chinese parent company ByteDance.
In Chew’s pre-made opening statement, the CEO quoted a report from internet watchdog Citizen Lab, saying, “There was no overt data transmission by TikTok to the Chinese government, and TikTok is located in China. I wasn’t connected to a domestic server.”
According to Ron Deibert, head of Citizen Labs, this is an error in what the report found.
When Chew’s testimony was released before the hearing, Deibert released a statement on Twitter, expressing his disappointment at how the study was misunderstood.
Deibert, who founded the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto in 2001, said researchers in a 2021 study had no insight into what happened after user data was collected and sent back to TikTok’s servers. I found
In a statement, Deibert said, “While we had no way of determining whether that happened, it is possible that the Chinese government could use unconventional techniques to pressure ByteDance to obtain TikTok user data. We also speculated about some mechanism of
The report also raises concerns that TikTok has dormant code written for Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
“We are concerned that configuration values returned by TikTok’s servers could enable dormant code written for Douyin, enabling China-specific features,” the report said. says.
Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) questioned Mr. Chew, referring to the Citizen Lab report, pointing out the discrepancy between where TikTok’s report stands and what the report actually says. bottom.
Research shows that both TikTok and Douyin contain code that can handle a special subset of search responses returned by their servers. For TikTok, this could apply if a user searches for terms like “suicide”. For example, a search page directs users to a hub of suicide prevention resources instead of showing videos.
Douyin’s code has the same module, but is more restrictive as the Chinese government has much stricter restrictions on speech than the US government.
The Citizen Labs report states that “TikTok and Douyin’s search censorship modules pre-defined the same set of applicable restrictions, but Douyin was able to enforce these restrictions on TikTok and Douyin by returning different values from their servers. applied in a different way,” he said.
Johnson expressed concern about the code similarities.
“Specific censorship parameters from Douyin are present on TikTok, but they are just turned off,” the lawmaker said.
Johnson repeatedly asked Chu if he had instructed the engineers to change this code. Chew dodged this question by pointing out that third-party experts have access to monitor his TikTok’s code. Johnson advised him that he did not answer what he presented as a yes or no question.
This was consistent throughout the hearing, with lawmakers asking Chu a complex question and demanding a one-word answer.
In a statement, the director of Citizen Lab noted that many of his concerns about TikTok are not specific to its single platform. They mirror those of other US-owned companies.
“A conversation about potential privacy and national security concerns about TikTok should serve as a reminder that most social media apps are unacceptably invasive by design,” Deibert wrote. increase.
