TED: TikTok CEO Shou Chew defends app to tech-friendly audience

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The corporate is engaged on securing the info sovereignty of U.S. customers that’s greater than every other tech firm has performed, says exec.

Revealed Apr 20, 2023 • 3 minute learn

Viewers listens as TikTok’s prime govt Shou Chew addresses the TED Talks April 20, 2023 in Vancouver. Picture by Gilberto Tadday /TED

TikTok’s prime govt Shou Chew jumped from the firestorm of U.S. congressional hearings over the cybersecurity of his firm’s wildly widespread video-sharing app final month into the cooler, extra welcoming pool of a TED Talks viewers in Vancouver Thursday.

And the extra geopolitical questions round whether or not TikTok collects extra knowledge than it must and whether or not its China-headquartered father or mother firm ByteDance might be compelled by Beijing at hand over that knowledge have been largely left exterior TED’s custom-crafted short-term theatre contained in the Vancouver Conference Centre.

Chew did, nonetheless, use the chance to press his message that ByteDance needs to cut back the danger of misuse or abuse of the app’s knowledge to “to as near zero as doable” on TED’s largely tech pleasant viewers.

That features ByteDance’s mission to present U.S. and European Union residents “knowledge sovereignty” by storing consumer knowledge solely inside their jurisdictions.

On that entrance, Chew stated the info from all new U.S. customers is already remoted on servers owned by the American knowledge agency Oracle and is engaged on its promise to delete U.S. knowledge off the corporate’s servers in Singapore.

“This sort of safety for American knowledge is past what every other firm in our business has ever performed,” Chew stated.

“Our knowledge has by no means been saved in China, by the best way,” Chew stated.

TED host and impresario Chris Anderson additionally stayed away from questions in regards to the Forbes journal investigation that uncovered ByteDance’s surveillance of journalists protecting the corporate, together with improperly accessing IP addresses of people.

However Chew famous that “knowledge entry by staff will not be knowledge entry to authorities, that is very totally different,” in the course of the dialogue. “However we hear the considerations that have been raised in the USA.”

Chew was additionally not requested to deal with the backdrop to his look at TED of an increasing listing of governments, together with the U.S., U.Ok., Canada and European Union which have banned TikTok from government-owned gadgets.

B.C. put its personal short-term ban on civil servants’ use of TikTok “out of an abundance of warning,” on the finish of February.

Exterior of the TED theatre, nonetheless, observers identified political undertones within the scrutiny of TikTok.

“There’s an growing competitors between China and the U.S. for, for financial energy and it is a battlefield for that,” stated Peter Chow-White, a professor in Simon Fraser College’s faculty of communication.

Specializing in TikTok “is far more political than it’s really sensible,” Chow-White stated.

He added that U.S. authorities haven’t offered any proof to again up the publicly expressed fears about TikTok knowledge safety, so “it’s actually exhausting to inform the place that is empirical, the place it’s actual.”

And Chow-White stated it’s troublesome to inform how TikTok is totally different from different social media apps relating to knowledge safety.

“It’s like, why are you making a giant fuss about (knowledge) that, you already know, Google has entry to each single day? And so it’s bewildering (however) extremely fascinating,” Chow-White stated.

To Vancouver TikTok creator Ashley MacLachlan, the assault on TikTok feels xenophobic and maybe pushed by its competitor Meta, the tech behemoth that owns Fb and Instagram.

“I additionally assume that Meta doesn’t perceive that they’re taking pictures themselves within the foot,” she added.

MacLachlan is a pun-laden Vancouver TikTok creator with an viewers of near 250,000 followers she entertains on her account, ash.renee.ley, with a seamless string of father jokes, tacky pickup traces and “chaotic leisure.”

Her journey began by fluke after she posted a joke response to a remark about small palms went viral with two-million views.

MacLachlan segued from that to construct an viewers that’s allowed her to turn into a full-time content material creator.

And whereas she acknowledges she isn’t a cybersecurity skilled, MacLachlan stated she understands the info that customers give to apps will be mined. She stated she worries extra about Meta, based mostly on its monitor document with knowledge misuse.

“(What) plenty of this knowledge is (doing) is giving us customized experiences on the web,” MacLachlan stated. One thing she appreciates, she stated.

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