The Hypocrisies of the TikTok Hearings
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 30 March 2023
⏱️ 37 minutes
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Summary
U.S. lawmakers have said that they are moving forward with a plan to ban TikTok, one of the most popular apps in the world. In hearings last week, Congress questioned TikTok’s C.E.O., Shou Zi Chew, about the platform’s addictive algorithm, its content, and whether it shares user data with the Chinese government. The hearings bore a resemblance to the questioning of Mark Zuckerberg over Facebook in 2018—not least because of the representatives’ incomprehension of how the technology works. This déjà vu raises questions: Why hasn’t anything been done to protect Americans’ data privacy? And is a ban the only way? Kyle Chayka, who wrote about Chew and his critics at the hearings, joins Tyler Foggatt for a conversation about what separates the real dangers of TikTok from alarmism and xenophobia.
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| 1:12.0 | You're listening to the political scene. I'm Tyler Fagget, a senior editor at The New Yorker. |
| 1:17.7 | U.S. lawmakers have said that they're moving forward with a plan to ban TikTok, one of the most |
| 1:22.2 | popular apps in the world. When you hear people talk about the dangers of TikTok, a lot of |
| 1:26.8 | things tend to come up. |
| 1:28.3 | Its impact on attention spans, its addictive algorithms, and its memes, which incentivize |
| 1:33.4 | kids to do ridiculous, sometimes dangerous things for internet popularity. |
| 1:37.8 | But what sets TikTok apart from other platforms in the eyes of Congress is not only its |
| 1:42.5 | content, but its ties to the Chinese government. |
| 1:45.2 | As Speaker Kevin McCarthy recently wrote on Twitter, the House will be moving forward with |
| 1:49.3 | legislation to protect Americans from the technological tentacles of the Chinese Communist Party. |
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