As the Trump administration weighs banning the social media platform entirely, TikTok is moving quickly to win over policymakers and to beef up its American operations.
TikTok said it has met with nearly 50 congressional representatives offices since April and has made plans to bring lawmakers into its ’Transparency Centers,’ where they can physically observe how content is moderated on the video-based platform.Two such U.S. monitoring centers, one in Washington, D.C., and another in Los Angeles, California, are scheduled to open later this year, with the L.A. one expected to open first.
“Because of some logistical challenges resulting from the ongoing pandemic, we’ve experienced some delays, but it’s still our goal to open both [transparency centers] this year,” a TikTok spokesperson said in an email. “We are making lawmakers and other experts aware of the centers, and will schedule visits as we get closer to opening and as it’s safe to do so based on [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidance and COVID-19 safety measures.”
Earlier this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Trump said the administration was considering banning the Chinese-owned TikTok in the U.S. Several federal government departments, including the State Department and Department of Homeland Security, said earlier this year that they were prohibiting the use of TikTok on government devices.
TikTok is not saying whether it has engaged with the Trump administration since a complete ban was floated this week, but it has made several recent hires to boost its presence and improve its perception in America.
Since the start of 2020, TikTok said it has hired a new CEO, chief information security officer, general counsel, and chief lobbyist, all based in the U.S. This week, TikTok’s lobbying team grew with the additions of Michael Hacker, a former advisor to South Carolina Democratic Rep. James Clyburn, and Albert Calamung, who had previously worked as a legislative liaison with the U.S. Marine Corps, as first reported by CNBC.
“TikTok is led by an American CEO, with hundreds of employees and key leaders across safety, security, product, and public policy here in the U.S.,” a TikTok spokesperson said. “We have no higher priority than promoting a safe and secure app experience for our users. We have never provided user data to the Chinese government, nor would we do so if asked.”
Alongside its slew of summer lobbying hires, the company announced last month that it intended to hire 100 data, privacy, and security experts in the U.S. before the end of 2020.
The rapid growth internally is needed to match the uptick in its users and content on its platform. In a “transparency report” published Thursday, TikTok said it removed more than 49 million videos in the last six months of 2019 for violating its guidelines and terms of service. Those removals amounted to under 1% of all videos uploaded by its users, according to TikTok.
With the 2020 election nearing, how TikTok addresses election-related content on its platform could prove critical to its reception among lawmakers. Facebook, for example, has launched an “Election Operations Center” that the company says will react quickly in the final 72 hours before an election to remove content that Facebook deems to include false information about elections. Twitter, meanwhile, has restricted the visibility of Mr. Trump’s tweets regarding mail-in voting.
TikTok has yet to fully reveal its strategy for combating misinformation and disinformation on its platform involving elections. TikTok’s parent company is the China-based ByteDance, which is considering changes to TikTok’s corporate structure. TikTok said its U.S.-based team determines its content and moderation policies said such policies were not influenced by any foreign government.
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.