TikTok's Congressional Hearing: In Data
Last week, TikTok's CEO testified to Congress. Here's the data on the discussion.
TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew testified to the House Energy & Commerce Committee last Thursday, which entailed hours of questioning by members of Congress — covering everything from child safety to data privacy. Here’s a data-driven breakdown of some of the most-mentioned terms in Shou Zi Chew’s written testimony and in the several-hour hearing itself. Brought to you by Global Cyber Strategies, a Washington, DC-based research and advisory firm.
The One-Liner
In the TikTok CEO’s written testimony, some of the most frequently mentioned terms were “creativity,” “security,” “privacy,” and “China,” and in the TikTok hearing, some of the most frequently mentioned terms were “China,” “ByteDance,” “children,” “algorithm,” “privacy,” “security,” and “Project Texas.”
TikTok’s Congressional Hearing: In Data
In the TikTok CEO’s written testimony, some of the most frequently mentioned terms were “creativity” (or some variant), “security,” “China/Chinese,” “privacy,” “trust,” and “Project Texas,” or TikTok’s name for its roadmap to address US government security concerns — part of which is already in place and part of which would proceed forward if the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reviews foreign investments in the US for security risks, signed an agreement with TikTok.
Terms like “Oracle,” “small business,” “legislation,” and “ByteDance” also received mention. (Oracle is involved in TikTok’s “Project Texas” arrangement, principally to handle some US user data; TikTok has recently made a public relations push to emphasize small business’ use of the platform — as it seems all Big Tech giants do under scrutiny; the mentions of “legislation” were in reference to TikTok’s stated interest in a conversation about legislation focused on the tech industry broadly; and ByteDance is, of course, the Chinese technology giant that owns TikTok.)
During the hearing itself, some of the most frequently mentioned terms were “China” or “Chinese,” “ByteDance,” “child” or “children,” “algorithm,” “privacy,” “security,” and “Project Texas.” I highly recommend checking out Tech Policy Press’ transcript of the hearing, from which this data was pulled.
Other terms of interest mentioned included “addictiveness” (many members of Congress spoke or asked about the platform’s addictiveness for children and teenagers); “influence” and “manipulate” (many members spoke to concerns about Chinese government influence over ByteDance and TikTok); and “propaganda.” Notably, “Facebook” also received 10 mentions during the hearing. For example, multiple members of Congress spoke about Facebook as symptomatic of problems with large technology platforms. In one case, a representative spoke about a study on Facebook’s failure, as well as TikTok’s failure, to adequately detect election disinformation in the United States.
It remains to be seen if the hearing will move the needle on Congressional support for a bill related to TikTok, which the executive branch would need if it were to even attempt to ban TikTok in the US. For now, it is clear the hearing was scattered in covering a wide variety of topics at once, from child safety to addictiveness to data privacy to the risk of Chinese government influence over content moderation.
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