Mr Zhou, who will testify on Thursday. He said, according to written testimony released Tuesday by the US House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, that “TikTok has never shared or received a request to share US user data with the Chinese government, and TikTok will not comply with requests that is if someone has asked for them before.”
He added that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is not owned or controlled by any government or government agency. “Let me make this very clear: ByteDance does not represent China or any other country. ” “A ban is only appropriate if there is no alternative. But we have other options.”
Many parties expressed concern that US user information could be transferred to the Chinese government by the app, prompting US lawmakers. Last week, TikTok said President Joe Biden’s administration had urged TikTok’s Chinese owners to withdraw their stake in the app. Otherwise, it may be banned by the US authorities.
TikTok has said it has spent more than $1.5 billion on strong data security efforts under a project called “Project Texas.”
Zhou said that once the process is completed, “US Data All protected assets will be protected by the laws of the United States. and under the control of a US-led security team. under this structure the Chinese government has no means of accessing or enforcing access. “
said the company It has begun to delete data protected by users of the United States. in data centers in Virginia and Singapore this month. Having started routing new US data to the Oracle cloud last year. Sow’s testimony also stated that the process is expected to be completed later this year.
Sow’s testimony said that 60 percent of ByteDance shares are owned by global institutional investors such as Black Rock, General Atlantic and Sequoia, and about 20 percent are owned by investors. The company was founded and another 20% was owned by workers and “including thousands of Americans .”
TikTok said on Monday that more than 150 million people in the US use it every month. After saying that in 2020 100 million Americans were using the app, Sow testified: The average user today is an adult who has completed a university degree.
“While US users account for 10% of our global community, But their views account for 25% of total views worldwide.”
Sow said the app’s current version does not collect accurate or approximate GPS data from US users.
