Josh Hawley Slams TikTok for Allowing ‘Censorship from Beijing’

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) slammed social media company Tik Tok for bowing to pressure from its parent company, the Chinese-owned ByteDance, calling it “censorship from Beijing.”

The short-video app TikTok has quickly has become one of the country’s fastest-growing social media platforms. However, the app has faced criticism from former U.S. workers who have alleged that its Chinese parent company has imposed strict rules on what can appear on the app.

Former U.S. employees told the Washington Post that content moderators in Beijing, China, had the final authority on whether flagged videos were approved to be on the app.

The Chinese company’s influence over the app has led to the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to review what led ByteDance to purchase TikTok’s precursor, Musical.ly, under ByteDance’s ownership. Lawmakers such as Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) have urged federal government officials to investigate what they called a “potential counterintelligence threat we cannot ignore.”

Hawley, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, plans to host a hearing Tuesday afternoon to discuss the tech industry’s connections to China; TikTok officials declined to testify in the hearing.

TikTok officials said that they have continued to update their content moderation rules and increase the American team’s independence from its Chinese owners.

Vanessa Pappas, TikTok’s U.S. manager, said, “TikTok has grown quickly, much like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat grew during their early years. And like those platforms, growth has posed challenges in terms of making sure our policies and practices keep up.”

Hawley decried TikTok’s content moderation practices as “censorship from Beijing” and said that this story shows why TikTok declined to testify before Hawley’s hearing Tuesday.