At this time’s listening to on youngster 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 providers posed for youngsters. Most of the lawmakers emphasised emotional influence, taking part in to an viewers stuffed with households who’d had children focused by predators or in any other case harmed on-line.
However halfway by way of the listening to, it was dragged astray by a predictable tangent: the truth that TikTok is owned by Chinese language firm ByteDance. And a gathering ostensibly about maintaining children protected dipped right into a now-familiar try to 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 issues 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 continues 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 extensively identified, is Singaporean.
“You often say that you live in Singapore,” Cotton mentioned 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, mentioned Chew). “Have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party?” 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 isn’t a part of China.)
The Washington Publish’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 youngster security right here. It’s not even essential to make the case that China might need undue affect over TikTok. Apple, for example, has weathered years of critiques about its relationship to the Chinese language authorities; no cheap individual has ever prompt this hinges on Tim Cook dinner being a secret communist. As a substitute, it’s a line of questioning that appears merely designed to play on Chew’s foreignness — even when it’s bought nothing to do with the subject at hand.