Amid demands to ban it under the pretext of espionage… the head of the “Tik Tok” application appears before Congress to testify

The CEO of the Chinese “TikTok” company, Xu Ziqiu, agreed to testify before the US Congress next March, amid a wave of calls to ban the application of short videos, under the pretext of accusations of spying on users.
Qiu will appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on March 23 to address Republican lawmakers’ concerns about TikTok’s privacy security issues, according to the Wall Street Journal, quoting a spokesperson for the US committee.
Xu Ziqiu agreed to testify voluntarily, and will be the only witness at the committee hearing.
Justifying this step, the chairwoman of the Energy and Commerce Committee in the US House of Representatives, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, said, “The TikTok application has intentionally allowed the Chinese government to access user data, and Americans deserve to know the steps the application takes to protect them while they are online.”
Rodgers also requested more information from the TikTok app regarding its impact on young people, amid concerns about harmful content and potential sexual exploitation of minors on the Chinese platform, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
This news comes, less than a month after US President Joe Biden signed a bill restricting the use of the TikTok app to federal government agencies.
TikTok is currently subject to state government smartphone access bans in more than half of US states due to security concerns about user data allegedly being accessed by the Chinese government.
It is noteworthy that the “Tik Tok” application has at least 100 million users in America.