TikTok CEO Shou Chew will testify in a listening to earlier than the US Home of Representatives Committee on Vitality and Commerce this Thursday, March 23 at 10:00 a.m. ET.
As CEO, Chew is liable for TikTok’s enterprise operations and strategic selections.
The listening to, “TikTok: How Congress Can Safeguard American Information Privateness and Defend Youngsters from On-line Harms,” can be streamed reside on the Vitality and Commerce Committee’s website.
Based on a written assertion supplied by Chew, the listening to will concentrate on TikTok’s alleged dedication to transparency, youth safety, consumer safety and information safety.
It additionally appears to deal with the difficulty of misconceptions concerning the platform, corresponding to its connection to the Chinese language authorities by means of its guardian firm ByteDance.
Chew shared a particular message to TikTok from Washington, DC yesterday to thank 150 million customers, 5 million companies and seven,000 staff throughout the US for serving to construct the TikTok group.
@tiktokOur CEO, Shou Chew, shares a particular message on behalf of your complete TikTok group to thank our group of 150 million People forward of his congressional listening to later this week.♬ Unique sound – TikTok
The video has garnered over 85,000 feedback from customers, a lot of whom describe how TikTok has enabled them to work together with individuals around the globe and discover unbiased information, new views, academic content material, inspiration and pleasure.
TikTok updates insurance policies and gives extra academic content material
TikTok has made important modifications to its platform to deal with many of those issues forward of this listening to to avoid a full US ban on the platform.
Beneath is an outline of a few of TikTok’s efforts to rehabilitate its pre-hearing notion.
Up to date Neighborhood Tips – TikTok has up to date the group tips and shared its group ideas to show its dedication to preserving the platform secure and inclusive for all customers.
For You Feed Refresh – TikTok recommends content material to customers based mostly on their interplay with content material and creators. For customers who really feel that suggestions not align with their pursuits, TikTok has launched the power to refresh the For You web page, permitting them to obtain new suggestions as in the event that they opened a brand new account.
STEM Feed – To enhance the standard of academic content material on TikTok, a STEM feed can be launched for content material centered on science, expertise, engineering, and math. Not like the content material proven when customers seek for the #STEM hashtag, TikTok says Frequent Sense Networks and Poynter will evaluate STEM feed content material to make sure it is secure and factually correct for youthful audiences .
This might make it extra just like the model of TikTok in China – Douyin – that promotes academic content material to youthful audiences by way of entertaining content material.
Collection Monetization – To encourage creators to create in-depth, informative content material, TikTok has launched a brand new collection content material monetization program. Collection enable creators to earn income by posting as much as 80 movies of as much as 20 minutes in size behind a paywall.
Extra congressional efforts to limit TikTok
Tomorrow’s TikTok listening to is not the one effort by Congress to limit or ban applied sciences like TikTok.
Earlier this month, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) launched the RESTRICT Act (Limiting the Emergence of Safety Threats that Risk Data and Communications Know-how), which might create a proper course of for the federal government to evaluate the dangers of the expertise and to mitigate international locations like China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela.
Organizations just like the Tech Oversight Mission have indicated that Congress ought to look past TikTok and study comparable dangers to nationwide safety and youthful audiences posed by different large tech platforms like Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta.
We’ll be following tomorrow’s listening to intently – make sure to come again for our protection of how this may affect customers and predict what is going to occur subsequent.
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