One of the reasons why there's so much colorful content on TikTok is its sheer size. The app now has 150 million monthly active users in the United States alone, CEO Shou Chew confirmed. When you have this many people, some of them will naturally surprise you. It's a mathematical guarantee.
However, concerns over TikTok remain abundant. A growing number of lawmakers in the US and other countries are talking about its ties to China through its parent company, ByteDance.
TikTok acknowledged to CNN that federal officials are demanding the app’s Chinese owners sell their stake in the social media platform, or risk facing a US ban on the app. (In 2020, when the Trump administration made a similar threat, TikTok said it had 100 million US users.)
“Now, this comes at a pivotal moment for us,” Chew said. “Some politicians have started talking about banning TikTok, now this could take TikTok away from all 150 million of you.”
In March, Chew faced four-and-a-half hours of questioning at a US congressional hearing. From both Democrats and Republicans, there was no let-up. A spokesperson for TikTok said afterward the politicians were "grandstanding". But between the sometimes frustratingly verbose questioning, there were a few takeaways.
For example, there was criticism of TikTok from Republicans and Democrats, and the level of distrust and skepticism from all sides was stark. "Welcome to the most bipartisan committee in Congress," said Republican congressman Buddy Carter.
It was really interesting to see so many politicians - who agree on practically nothing - agreeing wholeheartedly that TikTok was a security threat. But the company later complained that not enough time had been spent focusing on the platform's measures to keep data safe.
Also, ByteDance (TikTok's parent company) engineers in China have access to some US data. Mr. Chew kept talking about a "Project Texas", a proposal that will see it store all data in the US under the watch of American firm Oracle.
However, Project Texas is not fully operational. And Mr. Chew confirmed that engineers at ByteDance do have access to data. "We rely on global interoperability, Chinese engineers have access to data," he said.
It was an admission that politicians kept coming back to. Their point was that if data can be accessed by engineers in China, it's hard to see how the Chinese government couldn't also access it.
Mr. Chew's arguably least successful defense was his attempt to distance TikTok from ByteDance.
By any definition, the Chinese company owns TikTok. (Mr. Chew himself used to be ByteDance's chief financial officer.) When initially asked, he didn't want to say whether he owned shares in ByteDance. Pressed by lawmakers, he eventually confirmed that did, but tried to downplay the connection.
China's government says it would oppose any US plan to force ByteDance to sell TikTok, something authorities are reportedly considering.
At one point in the hearing, Mr. Chew was asked by congresswoman Nanette Barragán, a Democrat, whether or not his own children used TikTok.
He said they didn't because they live in Singapore and in that country, the app for children younger than 13 is not available. However, he did add that the children's version of the app is available in the US, and he would let his children use it if they were in America.