Thu. Mar 28th, 2024

TikTok is rolling out a allure offensive forward of Thursday’s congressional listening to, placing CEO Shou Zi Chew in customers’ feeds to warn them a couple of looming ban. Chew posted a minute-long video to the ByteDance subsidiary’s official TikTok account, rallying customers to defend the app.

Chew’s video outlines factors he’ll in all probability hit in his Home Vitality and Commerce Committee testimony later this week, the place legislators will query whether or not the app’s Chinese language possession makes it untrustworthy. That features the information that TikTok now has 150 million American customers — one thing information shops lately reported based mostly on advance details about his testimony. “That’s nearly half of the US coming to TikTok,” he observes, noting the quantity contains 5 million US companies. “The vast majority of these are small and medium companies.”

We additionally study that TikTok has 7,000 American staff, which is lower than the ten,000 or extra that TikTok aimed for in 2020 however an enormous leap over the 1,400 US headcount that yr.

However on to the unhealthy information. “Some politicians have began speaking about banning TikTok,” Chew says. Whereas it’s a barely odd evaluation on condition that the “beginning” occurred nearly three years in the past and the “speaking about” was signing an government order issuing a ban, it’s true that the difficulty has morphed from a nebulous Donald Trump demand to a mainstream political place prior to now few months. “Now this might take TikTok away from all 150 million of you.” Chew doesn’t do something as gauche as name for customers to take part within the democratic course of by contacting their native congressperson, however he does ask them to “let me know within the feedback what you need your elected representatives to learn about what you’re keen on about TikTok.” The highest remark to this point: “ one thing went unsuitable when the boss has to indicate up.”

“Some politicians have began speaking about banning TikTok.”

However it’s not shocking Chew is lastly declaring an apparent truth: locking TikTok out of the US can be an almost unprecedented transfer that vast numbers of Individuals would discover, and TikTok is betting they received’t prefer it.

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