WASHINGTON, DC — While you sit and stare at TikTok, the US officials in Washington are disturbed by your IQ level, the rate of your degradation and how fast you will become dumber than monkey.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has been grilled on March 23 at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Agenda
On the agenda as diverse as removal bias against black Americans (content creators), election disinformation, and the platform’s impact on the mental development and degradation of young men, women and other genders, the core part of users of the platform.
According to the latest data, there is over 150 mln/mo active users in the United States who uses TikTok. But the app’s massive popularity has only add fuel to the fire of suspicions among US officials that user data collected in the United States could be shared and used by Chinese government.
The process
However, at the very beginning of his speech, Mr. Chew wanted to dissociate himself from the Chinese government. He noted that it’s private company and not under control of the Chinese government.
We would like to remind you that earlier China introduced a law that allows the audit of national security data of all their firms, including ByteDance, and under the country’s program to merge civil and military technologies, such techs are also becoming their national security assets.
“TikTok is a weapon by the Chinese Communist Party to spy on you, manipulate what you see and exploit [it] for future generations,” Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers mentioned.
TikTok’s Chief Executive also brought up Project Texas, the company’s proposal to collaborate with Oracle company to validate its code and ensure US user data is stored right inside the country.
However, validate that data stays in US and use this data against the US citizens with the help of various algorithms written with code that is an intellectual property of ByteDance are two different things.
“Project Texas just doesn’t pass the smell test,” Rep. Angie Craig replied. “My constituents are concerned that TikTok and the Chinese Communist Party are controlling their data and seeing our own vulnerabilities.”
What vulnerabilities are Mrs. Craid talking about here? Lack of intelligence is also a vulnerability, and the more the IQ of citizens falls, the more vulnerable America becomes.
Voice of the streets
While Mr. Chew was answering questions of the US officials, we went on the streets to ask some questions about TikTok, and that’s the answers we received from ordinary Americans:
“My son is watching TikTok almost for days. He practically dropped out of school, the level of his grades has become much worse over the past year.”
Elisabeth Lapinoche, housewife, 53 year old.
“My daughter is always watching some short dumb videos on this TikTok. She just swipes them one by one, I remember my father sitting in front of the TV in the same way thoughtlessly at one time and switching channels with the remote control without stopping on any of them. It didn’t end well.”
Kevin Attard, architect, 49 year old.
As we can see, the older generation of Americans is also concerned that this application is useful for their children, and, as a result, for the entire future generation.
The latest showdown between two countries over popular app is likely to worsen already deteriorating relations. Governments are keep fighting over software bans. Concerns over espionage are growing. It looks like national security issues are discussed even louder.
