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By Anna Skinner and Alex J. Rouhandeh
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The concerns around TikTok being a threat to America's security has done what many other issues have been unable to: unite legislators in a bipartisan response.
But that response isn't a positive one for TikTok CEO Shou Chew.
Chew appeared before Congress on Thursday to provide testimony as he attempts to thwart a TikTok ban in the U.S. Republican and Democrat lawmakers united in a series of sometimes-harsh questions and comments amid the app's Chinese origins.
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National security is bipartisan issue
The issue of TikTok potentially exposing data from millions of Americans to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has received rare bipartisan support.
"TikTok's CEO Shou Chew is getting battered from both sides of the aisle at a congressional hearing Thursday," Barron's tech reporter Eric Savitz tweeted Thursday. "The odds of a ban just spiked."
Chew has said that the company wouldn't provide data to the CCP. He has suggested various security measures, such as storing American data in an American company, but lawmakers remained critical of the app. Legislators have proposed various other solutions, such as urging ByteDance—the Chinese-based company that owns TikTok—to sell its shares in the app or risk being banned in the U.S.
Oren Levin-Waldman, a political strategist with PoliticalVIP, told Newsweek that a bipartisan reaction during a congressional hearing is rare, but when it happens, it usually involves matters of national security.
"Even there, in recent years national security has become overly partisan," Levin-Waldman said. "TikTok's CEO needs to understand that concerns about China's government, under its communist leadership, collecting data on users in the U.S. is in fact legitimate."
Data protection issue goes beyond TikTok
Other lawmakers believe data protection is an issue that goes far beyond ByteDance's access to TikTok data.
Representative Jamaal Bowman, a Democrat representing New York, told Newsweek that he is against banning the app because it doesn't solve the major problems facing the nation.
"We should not require ByteDance to sell TikTok to an American company," he said in a statement. "The hysterical focus on TikTok takes attention away from the real conversation that we should be having on protecting Americans' data and privacy.
"We need comprehensive data privacy legislation that protects our citizens like the European Union has, and that keeps young people safe on the internet," he added. "Requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok will not solve these broader industry issues."
Bowman said he used TikTok to interact with the community in a "positive, uplifting way," which echoes Chew's description of the app's purpose: to provide joy and creativity to the user.
Legislators unlikely to change their minds on TikTok
Other lawmakers were wary of the app's purpose.
"TikTok poses as a Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood but it acts like Big Brother," Representative Russ Fulcher, an Idaho Republican, said during the testimony, according to a tweet by Reuters tech correspondent Greg Bensinger.
Darrell West, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution's Center for Technology Innovation, said that because of the politics surrounding China, it's unlikely that TikTok will see a significant warming in its relations with many of those on Capitol Hill.
"There's a lot of sentiment in Congress to get tough on China, and there's not a whole lot that company can do to change that," West told Newsweek. "Politicians need a poster child, and [TikTok] is it right now.
"There's concern on the security front. There're worries about possible disinformation, so I think all that is combined to make TikTok the target of the current situation," West added. "[TikTok] has not managed to slow down the train that is moving towards it."
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