Technology & Telecommunications

Xenophobic Rhetoric Overshadowed Real Users’ Rights Protection Concerns During TikTok Hearing

Last Thursday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew faced five hours of questioning before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The stated purpose of the hearing was for lawmakers and the American people to hear more about TikTok’s commitments to protecting user data and, as TikTok is ultimately owned by Chinese company ByteDance, learn more about TikTok’s ties to the Chinese government. However, it became clear this was not the intention of most lawmakers present. Instead, the hearing served as a stage for political theater and “gotcha” moments.

As Evan Greer of Fight for the Future succinctly noted, the hearing was “mostly xenophobic showboating to show that they’re [legislators are] tough on tech and tough on China.”

Not only was this language and posture xenophobic and racially charged; it was a missed opportunity to address critical privacy and security matters and produce meaningful solutions to protect users’ rights across all platforms in the U.S.

Anti-Chinese and Xenophobic Rhetoric

By weaponizing aggressive anti-China rhetoric throughout the hearing, lawmakers perpetuated the increasingly harmful narrative that falsely equates everything Chinese with threatening actions by the Chinese government. In framing TikTok as a foreign “untenable threat to Americans’ online privacy,” lawmakers missed a chance to talk about legitimate concerns around privacy and misuse of user data on the part of TikTok and other social media apps. Any attempts to have a frank conversation about these potential issues were overshadowed by the harmful, racist language employed by Congressional members.

While congressional hearings with tech CEOs are often contentious, this one had the added element of not-so-subtle xenophobia directed at the hearing’s only witness.

Many lawmakers assumed that Chew was Chinese and tried to associate him with the Chinese Communist Party, despite Chew’s repeated reminders throughout the hearing that he is Singaporean. Chew lives in Singapore and does not identify as Asian American, yet his experience sadly mirrors that of Asian Americans who are often treated as a monolith. At a moment of tense US-China relations, bipartisan U.S. lawmakers appeared to treat Chew, an east Asian man, as a “stand-in” for the Chinese government.

• Representative Dan Crenshaw brazenly stated that Chinese citizens “must cooperate with Chinese intelligence whenever they are called upon…That would include you.”
• Members asked Chew to answer questions about the Chinese government’s data surveillance policies, over which he obviously has no control or influence, and mischaracterized his relationship to Chinese government officials.

Through question after question, lawmakers attempted to underscore the foreignness of both the company and its CEO. Surely, had this hearing been held during the tenure of Kevin Mayer, TikTok’s former CEO and Chew’s predecessor, the framing of questions and tone taken towards the witness would not have contained the racially charged animosity that Chew received.

Why does it matter?

Aggressive political rhetoric against Asian “adversaries” of the United States often has dangerous implications for all Asian Americans, with countless innocent lives ruined by false allegations in the name of national security. There are far too many examples of this kind of racial profiling in recent American history, including Chinatowns attacked during the Korean American war, Japanese American incarceration during World War II, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian Americans targeted after 9/11, and scientists of Chinese descent persecuted for unsubstantiated claims of espionage.

Under the guise of criticizing an authoritarian government, lawmakers talked in broad terms about the threats posed by “the Chinese” (as opposed to the “Chinese government) and “communists,” drawing haunting parallels to the McCarthy era of the 1950s.

Sadly, as China is increasingly portrayed in national conversations as America’s top adversary, we will continue to see a palpable spike in racist attacks against Asian Americans.

What should have been discussed?

Some fears of TikTok’s potential for harm are genuine, including troubling accounts of ByteDance employees improperly obtaining personal information of TikTok-critical reporters, the application’s algorithm suggesting potentially harmful or misleading content to its users, and accusations of the platform suppressing videos critical of the Chinese government and its oppression of Uyghur and other Muslim minorities in China. But with lawmakers too busy attacking TikTok’s CEO on irrelevant matters outside of his purview, an important conversation around privacy and specific data practices and other concerning policies of TikTok were sidelined or obscured.

Advocates and legislators alike have been calling for more robust regulation on the social media platform industry. Yet, legislators failed to raise questions or even meaningful critique to move the conversation forward.

Legislators should have focused on substantive tech policy matters that are overdue for regulatory updates and enforcement, including:

• Data storage and transfer across different geographies and/or jurisdictions
• Companies’ internal policies that allow access to unauthorized data, and other security breaches
• Setting data collection, retention, use, and transfer standards to protect user and community privacy
• Platform accountability measures to increase transparency and accountability across the entire social media industry, not just one platform

Banning TikTok won’t solve current data privacy concerns

Banning a single app indiscriminately, or even just limiting the scope of the discussion to one platform, when these threats are ubiquitous across many online platforms, leaves users vulnerable to continual harm. The location and jurisdiction of TikTok’s parent company may be relevant, but it deflects attention related to the underlying lack of transparency and accountability to which the entire industry must answer.

There are legitimate privacy concerns surrounding TikTok and many other free apps that collect data from its users, but it is possible to question a company’s policies, advocate for privacy and data protections, and/or criticize a government’s civil and human rights agenda without employing racist rhetoric.

Sadly, this past Thursday, xenophobia obfuscated any efforts by lawmakers to gain a better understanding of the implications and potential solutions to data, privacy, and security concerns about TikTok and the broader social media industry.

Advancing Justice | AAJC’s Telecommunications and Technology team seeks to help our diverse Asian American communities reap the benefits of technology while also protecting them from its potential harms.