Singaporean Chew grilled on security, Chinese connection

The lawmakers already had their minds made up for the most part, he said. A Singaporean, Mr Chew was grilled over concerns about privacy for Americans' data, protections for children online, and TikTok's connection to the Chinese Communist Party.

Research Scientist at the Georgia Instiutute of Technology's School of Public Policy Brenden Kuerbis stated that Mr Chew tried to explain how his global company deals with complex safety and content moderation, and how security decisions are made when running a platform as large as TikTok.

He was rarely given a chance to elaborate, he said.

One area that Mr Chew succeeded in was explaining some of the nuances around the platform's algorithm and what makes it successful, said Dr Kuerbis.

This includes how users inputs affect the outputs, and how varying the terms of use and policies for different age groups and national laws affect the content moderation that the firm does.

Dr Kuerbis said that TikTok should be compared to other US social media platforms that are confronting similar issues.

Both analysts said that Mr Chew spent time elaborating on Project Texas, which is the data localisation arrangement that would move all US user data to a US-based cloud vendor, Oracle, and a new US government-controlled corporation.

Despite the detailed plan he laid out, several committee members remained skeptical, claiming that ByteDance or the Chinese government could still gain access to the data, said Dr Kuerbis.

He said that the deck appears to be stacked against TikTok with bipartisan agreement among Republicans and Democrats about the threats the platform poses.

He added that Committee hearings like these can be less about understanding and more about scoring political points Likewise, Prof Chander said that Congress is trying to make a point noting that Mr Chew's effort has not placated its critics.

The analysts said that the country will not legislate a ban on the app that has 150 million monthly active users locally, despite the hostile stance of the US lawmakers.

The majority of the committee were skeptical of Mr Chew's defence or outright hostile in some instances, but Dr Kuerbis said he did not feel much momentum gained in banning Tiktok.