TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew looks on as he testifies before a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing entitled “TikTok: How Congress can Safeguard American Data Privacy and Protect Children from Online Harms,” as lawmakers scrutinize the Chinese-owned video-sharing app, on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 23, 2023.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
TikTok and its parent company combined to spend more than $13 million on lobbying federal government officials since 2019 — an effort that appears to have fallen flat as lawmakers push proposals targeting the app’s ownership by a Chinese company or even seek to ban TikTok in the U.S. outright.
Weeks after Republican Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri introduced legislation that would bar TikTok downloads nationwide, Buck’s staff received a call in February from Michael Beckerman, the head of the social media company’s U.S. public policy shop, according to a person close to Buck.
Beckerman pushed back on concerns from Buck’s staff that TikTok is harvesting customer data, and advocated for the company’s new initiative known as Project Texas, this person explained. Project Texas is TikTok’s effort to place its U.S. customer data into a secure hub managed by the tech giant Oracle, which is meant to ease U.S. government concerns that the information could be accessed by Chinese parent company ByteDance or members of the ruling party in China.
The lobbying comes amid a sustained effort by TikTok to play down fears raised by lawmakers who want to ban the app, which has 150 million monthly active users in the U.S. The company has tried to show it can address concerns about user information without an outright ban, but most lawmakers at a contentious hearing about TikTok this month seemed unconvinced Project Texas would adequately do so.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew told U.S. lawmakers at the hearing that China-based employees at ByteDance may have access to some U.S. data from the app. But he assured them…
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