\n\u2018So infuriating\u2019: TikTokers are fuming over potential ban<\/br>
\n2023-03-27 22:31:40<\/br><\/p>\n
In the aftermath<\/span> of TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew\u2019s brutal five-hour Congressional hearing<\/a> on Thursday, TikToker and disinformation researcher Abbie Richards<\/a> summed up what so many creators were thinking: \u201cIt\u2019s actually remarkable how much less Congress knows about social media than the average person,\u201d Richards told TechCrunch.<\/p>\n Across TikTok, users<\/a> mocked<\/a> congresspeople for misunderstanding<\/a> how technology works. In one instance, Representative Richard Hudson (R-NC) asked Chew if TikTok connects to a user\u2019s home Wi-Fi network. Chew responded, bewildered, \u201cOnly if the user turns on the Wi-Fi.\u201d<\/p>\n The ignorant questions weren\u2019t unique to the government\u2019s interrogation of Chew. At a high-profile hearing in 2018, the late Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) infamously asked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg how Facebook makes money if the app is free. Zuckerberg responded, \u201cSenator, we run ads<\/a>,\u201d failing to stifle a smirk. During a tech hearing two years ago, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) created another notorious viral moment<\/a> by asking Facebook\u2019s global head of safety if she would \u201ccommit to ending finsta.\u201d<\/p>\n As entertaining as these lapses in basic knowledge are, TikTok creators have serious concerns about the future of an app that\u2019s given them a community and, in some cases, a career.<\/p>\n TikTok creator Vitus \u201cV\u201d Spehar, known as Under the Desk News<\/a>, has amassed 2.9 million followers by sharing global news in an approachable way. But in this week\u2019s news cycle, they\u2019re front-and-center (literally: they sat right behind<\/a> the TikTok CEO as he testified).<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s really concerning that a government is considering removing American citizens from the global conversation on an app as robust as TikTok,\u201d Spehar told TechCrunch. \u201cIt\u2019s not just banning the app in the United States; it means disconnecting American citizens from Canada, the UK, Mexico, Iran, Ukraine and all of the frontline reporting you see from those countries. It just shows up on our [For You page].\u201d<\/p>\n Spehar is part of a group of TikTok creators who travelled to Washington, D.C. this week to advocate on TikTok\u2019s behalf \u2014 and against the looming threat of a national ban<\/a>. They participated in a press conference on Wednesday afternoon hosted by Representative Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), a rare dissenting voice in Congress who raised questions about what he described as the \u201chysteria and panic\u201d<\/a> surrounding TikTok.<\/p>\n Vitus Spehar, host of the TikTok channel Under The News Desk, hosts a live stream during a news conference outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, March 22, 2023. (Nathan Howard\/Bloomberg)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cCongress made clear that they don\u2019t understand TikTok, they don\u2019t listen to their constituents who are in the community of TikTokers \u2014 and are using this TikTok hysteria as a way to pass legislation that gives them superpowers to ban any app they deem \u2018unsafe\u2019 in the future,\u201d Spehar said following the hearing.<\/p>\n Tech ethicists and creators alike share this frustration. Dr. Casey Fiesler, a University of Colorado Boulder professor of tech ethics and policy, believes that the national security concerns about the app are overstated.<\/p>\n \u201cThe risk seems to be entirely speculative right now, and to me, I\u2019m not sure how it is substantially worse than all of the things that are troubling about social media right now that the government has not been focusing on,\u201d Fiesler said. She commands an audience of over 100,000 followers on TikTok, where she explores issues like the nuances of content moderation<\/a> and other topics that might come up in her graduate courses.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s any way to frame this as a general data privacy issue without going after every other tech company,\u201d Fiesler<\/a> told TechCrunch. \u201cThe only thing that makes sense is that it\u2019s literally only about the fact that the company is based in China.\u201d<\/p>\n There is still no evidence that TikTok has shared data with the Chinese government. But reports have shown that employees at TikTok\u2019s Beijing-based parent company ByteDance have viewed American user data. An investigation<\/a> last year revealed that engineers in China had open access to TikTok data on U.S. users, undermining the company\u2019s claims to the contrary. Another report<\/a>, corroborated<\/a> by ByteDance, found that a small group of engineers inappropriately accessed two U.S. journalists\u2019 TikTok data. They planned to use the location information to determine if the reporters had crossed paths with any ByteDance employees who may have leaked information to the press.<\/p>\n Still, TikTokers point to the distinction between sharing data with a private Chinese company and the Chinese government. For its part, TikTok has tried to appease U.S. officials with a plan called Project Texas, a $1.5 billion undertaking that will move U.S. users\u2019 data to Oracle servers<\/a>. Project Texas would also create a subsidiary of the company called the TikTok U.S. Data Security Inc., which plans to oversee any aspect of TikTok involving national security.<\/p>\n Spehar said that they favor solutions like Project Texas over U.S. government proposals like the RESTRICT Act<\/a>, which would give the U.S. new tools for restricting and potentially banning technology exports from foreign adversaries.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think we should be looking at things like the RESTRICT Act, or any kind of broad legislation that gives the government the power to say, \u2018We\u2019ve decided something is unsafe,’\u201d they told TechCrunch.<\/p>\n Multiple congresspeople asked Chew about how TikTok moderates dangerous trends like \u201cthe blackout challenge<\/a>,\u201d in which children tried to see how long they can hold their breath. Children died from this behavior after it circulated on TikTok, but the game didn\u2019t originate on the platform: As early as 2008<\/a>, the CDC warned parents that 82 children had died from a trend called \u201cthe choking game.\u201d One congressman even referenced \u201cNyQuil chicken\u201d as a dangerous TikTok trend, despite the fact that there is little evidence<\/a>\u00a0anyone actually ate chicken soaked in cough medicine and the trend originated years ago on 4chan.<\/p>\n \u201cThe moral panic over TikTok challenges is something I\u2019ve debunked extensively, and then they just get parroted by these politicians that don\u2019t understand what a moral panic is,\u201d Richards told TechCrunch. \u201cTo utilize misinformation that I\u2019ve written about so much and tried to debunk, and to see it used against TikTok was just so infuriating.\u201d<\/p>\n Richards does acknowledge that TikTok\u2019s best feature is also its worst: Anything can go viral. She believes TikTok\u2019s \u201cbottom-up\u201d information environment does lend itself to misinformation, but that same dynamic also surfaces good content that would never get exposure on a different social network.<\/p>\n Richards is also a vocal critic<\/a> of TikTok\u2019s content moderation policies, which, like every other social network, are not always applied evenly. During Thursday\u2019s hearing, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) dramatically screened a month-old TikTok video depicting a gun alongside text threatening the leader of the House Committee that orchestrated Chew\u2019s testimony. It\u2019s an obvious violation of TikTok\u2019s content guidelines, but Richards points out that it had very little engagement.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the context of TikTok, something having 40 likes is effective moderation,\u201d Richards said. \u201cThat means the video isn\u2019t reaching very many people.\u201d She believes that a video like the one the Florida lawmaker highlighted shouldn\u2019t be on the platform at all, but ultimately, if it doesn\u2019t reach many users then the potential for harm is limited.<\/p>\n Other creators expressed frustration that congresspeople failed to consider how TikTok has helped Americans, like LGBTQ+ people who found community on the app or small business owners who were able to grow beyond their wildest dreams after going viral.<\/p>\n![\"Vitus](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/GettyImages-1249086286-1.jpg?resize=680%2C453&ssl=1\")
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