ICYMI Bloomberg: "TikTok Backs Out of House Meeting to Avoid Kids Safety Questions"
Chairman John Moolenaar of the Select Committee on China was interviewed by Bloomberg yesterday about the news TikTok reneged on its commitment to participate in a public roundtable with the committee.
Excerpts of the story are below.
TikTok Backs Out of House Meeting to Avoid Kids Safety Questions
TikTok dropped out of an upcoming meeting with the House Select Committee on China on national security issues, saying it couldn’t participate because of unrelated child-safety litigation, the leader of the panel said.
The company is “refusing to appear citing its own desire to avoid broader scrutiny of its child safety practices,” said US Representative John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, and the chairman of the committee.
The bipartisan congressional roundtable, months in the making, was set to take place Sept. 15 and focus on lawmakers’ questions about TikTok’s US business that was spun out earlier this year from China-based ByteDance Ltd. to majority-American owners under a national security deal. The US company had agreed to send its chief security officer, Will Farrell, to discuss how the new venture is safeguarding TikTok’s algorithm and Americans’ data from Chinese influence, but backed out on Aug. 27, Moolenaar said.
“They claimed that in light of Meta’s settlement with state attorneys general, they wouldn’t be able to answer questions on child-safety issues,” Moolenaar said Wednesday in an interview. But no part of the roundtable was meant to focus on kids, he said. The intent has instead been to assure the public that TikTok is following a national security law aimed at protecting Americans from foreign adversaries, including China, and increase transparency around how the app is operating under its new ownership.
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Moolenaar said it was unclear whether the directive to drop out had come from TikTok US, which oversees its safety and security efforts, or from ByteDance, which still owns a 19.9% stake in the company’s US operations and controls the most valuable parts of its business. That “goes to the heart of the concerns that remain about TikTok — its ownership, its loyalties, its commitment to the American people,” he said.
Earlier this week, TikTok and YouTube were absent from an event convened by the Trump administration’s Office of the Surgeon General on combating the harms of excessive screen use in American children. Safety chiefs from Meta and Snap were present, drawing even more attention to those missing in action.
“We’re disappointed that they backed out and we’re going to continue to work toward having these questions answered,” Moolenaar said Wednesday. The committee is trying to schedule another gathering before the end of the year and plans to again invite the new TikTok US CEO, Adam Presser. “TikTok’s missed another opportunity to be transparent and open, and that doesn’t speak well for TikTok.”