TikTok’s US future uncertain

TIKTOK user data can be accessed by staff at its Chinese parent company, the app’s chief executive has admitted in a fiery five-hour US congressional hearing.

On a day of drama, the Chinese government also opposed the Biden administration’s plan to force the sale of TikTok, leaving the app’s future hanging in the balance as it is caught in a dispute between the superpowers.

And the UK parliament moved to block TikTok from all devices on its network, broadening a ban on government phones announced last week that upped the pressure on Australia to take similar action.

TikTok chief Shou Zi Chew avoided weighing in on the Chinese government’s intervention in his first appearance at a congressional inquiry in Washington DC, where he maintained the company took national security and privacy concerns “very, very seriously”.

He said TikTok – used by 150 million Americans – would not be “manipulated by any foreign government” and that by the end of this year, all US user data would be behind a “firewall” in American servers run by American employees to prevent “unauthorised foreign access”.

But under heated questioning, Mr Chew acknowledged engineers at the company’s Chinese parent company ByteDance would have access to some user data until TikTok’s $US1.5bn “Project Texas” privacy overhaul was completed.

“We rely on global interoperability, and we have employees in China, so yes, the Chinese engineers do have access to global data,” he said.

“I have seen no evidence that the Chinese government has access to that data … They have never asked us, we have not provided it. I have asked that question.”

House Energy and Commerce Committee chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers said: “From the data it collects to the content it controls, TikTok is a grave threat of foreign influence in American life.”