Watch live: TikTok CEO testifies before House committee as potential U.S. ban looms

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TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will attest before the House Energy and Commerce Committee connected Thursday greeting arsenic his institution fights to stave disconnected a imaginable prohibition successful the U.S.

Chew plans to archer Congress that helium powerfully prioritizes the information of users, peculiarly teens, and that TikTok volition firewall U.S. idiosyncratic information from "unauthorized overseas access." Chew besides plans to accidental that the institution "will not beryllium manipulated by immoderate government" and it volition beryllium transparent and let autarkic monitors to measure its compliance.

TikTok has touted a analyzable program known arsenic Project Texas to assistance easiness U.S. concerns implicit its ownership. Under the plan, it volition basal its U.S. information operations domestically and let its codification to beryllium reviewed and sent to the app stores by extracurricular parties.

TikTok is owned by Chinese net elephantine ByteDance, and determination are longstanding fears among U.S. policymakers that the Chinese authorities could unit TikTok to crook implicit the monolithic trove of idiosyncratic information it collects arsenic portion of its concern model.

After 2 years of negotiations with the Committee connected Foreign Investment successful the United States, oregon CFIUS, the White House reportedly demanded past week that ByteDance merchantability TikTok. On Thursday, a Chinese commerce ministry spokeswoman said, "If the quality is true, China volition resolutely reason it."

The Biden medication has besides thrown its enactment down a new bipartisan Senate bill that would springiness the Commerce Department the powerfulness to prohibition TikTok successful the U.S. That measure and others similar it successful Congress person attracted scores of co-sponsors, some Democrats and Republicans.

TikTok became a viral sensation successful the U.S. by allowing young radical to make and stock abbreviated videos. But the institution announced this week that it has 150 cardinal users successful the United States, a fig that, if confirmed, amounts to astir 60% of the population.