As US weighs TikTok ban, McCarthy says House prepared to move forward with legislation

WASHINGTON (TND) — As the federal government continues to weigh a ban on TikTok, Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has said the House will be “moving forward” with legislation that he says will protect Americans from China.

“It's very concerning that the CEO of TikTok can't be honest and admit what we already know to be true—China has access to TikTok user data,” McCarthy said in a tweet Sunday.

It comes after the CEO, Shou Zi Chew, faced five hours of intense questioning by lawmakers Thursday on Capitol Hill about the relationship between the platform’s parent company ByteDance and the Chinese Communist Party.

Last week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee expressed concerns about user data the app collects and what kind of access the Chinese government might have to it.

But Chew downplayed his company’s ties to the Chinese government and said the platform has built a “firewall” around U.S. user data, protecting it from foreign access.

I have seen no evidence that the Chinese government has access to that data. They have never asked us; we have not provided it” said Chew.

The committee was also interested in determining what content the platform pushes toward users and if it engages in “heating” — a manual process of promoting or moderating certain posts to ensure that they “achieve a certain number of video views,” according to a report by Forbes.

Chew said the process is approved by local teams but lawmakers argue it’s a potentially dangerous way to control what posts are more visible or even to control the software on devices in general. It adds to fears that the CCP could be manipulating Americans — particularly kids and teens.

"Ultimately, national security is the biggest threat here. While this is a social media app at face value, this is really a weapon lurking in the shadows,” said Jake Denton, research associate in the Tech Policy Center at the conservative research institution the Heritage Foundation.

What this is, is an ability for the Chinese Communist Party to have unique access to the data on Americans and ultimately have an opportunity to push types of propaganda that can be devastating for our country. And so that's really what our core concern should be," he continued.

The Biden administration threatened to ban the app in the U.S. unless ByteDance agreed to give up its stakes in it. The Chinese government responded, saying it “firmly opposes” the demand, claiming that a sale involves exporting technology and thus has to be approved by the government.

McCarthy has said he would back a ban on TikTok but that he wants to “make sure we get it right.”

“It's a very simple thing to execute in terms of the practical application and all it really takes is President Biden to sign a piece of paper and the app stores, as well as mobile carriers, all will have to take this offline,” Denton said. “So in practice, it's actually very simple. It's just the political circus of actually getting this into play. That's the difficult task.”

On the other side of what's becoming a complex argument over the future of the app, some say that a ban would violate free speech provisions here in the U.S. But Denton disagrees.

The current ban proposition is being done based off of their practices, not the speech that's being conducted on the platform. So the main concern by lawmakers — and you saw this play out in the hearing last week — is the way in which TikTok handles the data and so when they consider the ban, it's because of those practices,” he said.

Right now, some feel that a ban that is the only way to address the concerns about national security regarding the app.

“I think we saw this play out in real-time at the hearing last week. There is not a single other option on the table at this time that will alleviate all of our concerns. If we do something other than that, there will still be questions as to whether or not China remains able to access our data and so ultimately, we have to push for a full ban because it's the only way to protect ourselves,” Denton said.