Ahead of his congressional testimony on Thursday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew announced in a TikTok video that the video app now has more than 150 million users in the US — up from 100 million in 2020. He also said that TikTok host more than 5 million companies in the country.
Amid talks about banning ByteDance’s app over national security concerns as tensions between the US and China continue to rise, Chew praised these numbers for demonstrating how the app is an important part of American culture.
“That’s almost half of the US coming to TikTok to connect, share, learn, or just have some fun,” he said in the video.
The executive also used the video to ask TikTok users to defend the app by letting their elected representatives know what they like about the app. The company could use these comments as testimonial to prove TikTok’s popularity.
“I will be testifying before Congress later this week to share everything we are doing to protect Americans using the app,” Chew said.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee will grill the app’s CEO on the app’s privacy practices and how it protects children.
“Americans deserve to know the extent to which their privacy is compromised and their data manipulated by ByteDance-owned TikTok’s relationship with China. What’s worse, we know that Big Tech companies, such as TikTok, use malicious algorithms to exploit children for profit and expose them to dangerous content online. We need to know what actions the company is taking to protect our children from online and offline harm,” the commission said in a press release last week.
Earlier this month, the US House Foreign Affairs Committee voted in favor of a bill that could give the Biden administration the power to ban the app. Meanwhile, reports indicate that authorities are pressuring ByteDance to sell TikTok or face an embargo as its ties to China raise concerns about passing user data to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Recently, the FBI and the US Department of Justice also started an investigation into TikTok after some employees allegedly used the app to spy on American journalists.
TikTok has spent nearly $1.5 billion on a charm offensive that includes an independent audit by Oracle and invitations for press and regulators to visit the newly built Transparency Center in LA. The company also started “Project Texas,” which aims to address lawmakers’ concerns and show that U.S. operations are transparent and separate from China-based operations.
In recent weeks, the UK, EU, Canada and New Zealand have all banned TikTok on various types of official government devices, similar to bans in the US.
Aside from this, TikTok today announced a revision to its community guidelines with new policies around the use of AI in content and climate misinformation. The new rules state that accounts must clearly disclose the use of AI in videos.