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In the present day’s listening to on little one security was — largely — an unusually targeted affair. The Senate Judiciary Committee referred to as up the CEOs of X, Meta, Snap, TikTok, and Discord and grilled them for 4 hours on the potential risks their companies posed for kids. Most of the lawmakers emphasised emotional influence, enjoying to an viewers crammed with households who’d had youngsters focused by predators or in any other case harmed on-line.
However halfway by the listening to, it was dragged off track by a predictable tangent: the truth that TikTok is owned by Chinese language firm ByteDance. And a gathering ostensibly about preserving youngsters secure dipped right into a now-familiar try and make TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew reply questions totally unrelated to the remainder of the day.
Though makes an attempt to ban TikTok final yr largely fizzled, there are actual considerations about its information storage insurance policies and Chinese language authorities affect over its moderation. Some lawmakers touched on them, asking Chew to supply an replace on Undertaking Texas, its information safety initiative. (TikTok remains to be engaged on it.) However the questions additionally strayed into makes an attempt to easily spotlight TikTok’s un-American origins, culminating in Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) urgent Chew aggressively and repetitively on his citizenship — which, it’s broadly identified, is Singaporean.
“You typically say that you just reside in Singapore,” Cotton stated earlier than demanding to know the place Chew’s passport was from (Singapore, clearly) and whether or not he’d utilized for citizenship in China or the US (no, stated Chew). “Have you ever ever been a member of the Chinese language Communist Celebration?” he then requested abruptly, as if hoping to catch Chew unexpectedly. Chew’s response wasn’t shocked a lot as fed up. “Senator! I’m Singaporean!” he reiterated. “No.” (Singapore will not be a part of China.)
The Washington Submit’s Drew Harwell described Cotton’s line of questioning as “McCarthy-esque.” Chew’s relationship to China was already mentioned exhaustively when he appeared earlier than Congress final yr, and Cotton didn’t clarify what it needed to do with little one security right here. It’s not even essential to make the case that China may need undue affect over TikTok. Apple, for example, has weathered years of critiques about its relationship to the Chinese language authorities; no affordable individual has ever prompt this hinges on Tim Cook dinner being a secret communist. As an alternative, it’s a line of questioning that appears merely designed to play on Chew’s foreignness — even when it’s received nothing to do with the subject at hand.
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