I'm not going to hit below the belt and base this on pronounciation, even though it was painful to hear them mangle Chew Shou Zi's name, or the names of Douyin, or Zhang Fuping, or even TikTok. Let's give a little grace. Despite the USA's reputation as a melting pot of cultures and races, roughly 80% of Americans speak only English, and some don't even speak it that well. Thus, expecting them not to slip up is grossly unfair.
Besides, we have more substantial things to focus on.
The Bad
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| Cathy McMorris Rodgers |
The Chair, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, definitely qualifies for this one. Right off the bat, she set the tone for some heavy-handed hypocrisy with this...
"I do want to remind the guest in the audience that the chair is obliged under the house rules and the rules of the committee to maintain order and preserve decorum in the committee room. I know that we have deep feelings on these issues and that we all may not agree on everything, but I ask that we abide by these rules and be respectful of our audience members, our viewers, and our witnesses."
...and then this.
"Your platform should be banned. I expect today you'll say anything to avoid this outcome. Like you are 100% responsible for what TikTok does, that you suddenly endorse a national data privacy standard. That Project Texas is more than a marketing scheme, that TikTok doesn't harm our innocent children, or that your ties to the Chinese Communist Party through ByteDance is just a myth. We aren't buying it."
That was not only disrespectful to the witness, more importantly, it was unprofessional. Talk about playing to the gallery. I'd expected better from American Congress. Maybe I shouldn't have.
"Can you say with 100% certainty, that ByteDance, the CCP cannot use your company or its divisions making content to promote pro CCP messages for an act of aggression against Taiwan?"
"The question is, are you 100% certain that they cannot use your company to promote such messages?"
"I wanted to hear you say with 100% certainty that neither ByteDance nor TikTok employees can target other Americans with similar surveillance techniques as you did with the journalists."
You don't need to have technical know-how to understand that in any system run or used by human beings or by algorithms created by human beings, "100% certainty" is a statistical impossibility. Thus, answering a question like this basically forces the answerer to lie or say "no". This was not stupid; it was malicious. The only reason why this lady is not in the "Ugly" section is because I acknowledge that unlike many of the speakers, she had an tricky job to do as Chair, and thus I'm going to cut her a little slack.
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| Bob Latta |
Bob Latta of Ohio started out OK, but at some point he got ridiculous, repeatedly pushing "yes or no" despite the complexity of the questions he posed, kept interrupting like a petulant child. He gave me the impression that he was entirely superfluous to this hearing. Like, what value did he really provide to the hearing? He seemed to have already made up his mind; why was he even here?
"It's impossible for me to conclude that the video is anything different than the type of propaganda the CCP requires Chinese companies to push on its citizens..."
Sir, it's impossible for me to conclude that you're anything but a waste of the last five minutes. I'm gonna move on.
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| Richard Hudson |
Sad to say, Richard Hudson of North Carolina belongs in this section even though most of the internet might opine that he belongs in the "Ugly" section. The clips of him asking Chew Shou Zi about whether TikTok can connect to his WiFi have gone viral and he's been the target of much derision.
But here's the thing - while his question might have come off as
To be fair, that segment aside, he was serious as a heart attack and didn't resort to theatrics. This was professional, no matter what you think of the WiFi question. I don't think he deserves to be in this section with the likes of, say, Bob Latta; alas, there are only three categories.
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| Brett Guthrie |
Brett Guthrie of Kentucky is included here not because of his behavior. He conducted himself properly. By my standards anyway, which sadly seem to be higher than those of American Congress. However, he slipped up by constantly harping on how different the content is between China (Douyin) and the USA (TikTok). Even when Chew Shou Zi tried to let him off the hook by gently suggesting that this was a less meaningful comparison than against other Social Media platforms in the USA, he insisted on walking right into it.
"What's the difference? I'm sorry, I'm out of time, but what's the difference in China? And here?"
And Chew finally just let him have it.
"Let me give you an example, Congressman. In my home country, Singapore, there is almost no illegal drug content because Singapore has very strict drug laws."
Wow, the sheer shade. Brett Guthrie moved on pretty quickly from that one. Yeah, you better run.
Mr Guthrie, content on Social Media is a reflection of the laws of the land. If drug content is not present in China and Singapore, that is because these countries have no tolerance for that content. It's not that TikTok needs to do better (although they certainly do), but that America herself needs to do better.
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| Tim Walberg |
Tim Walberg of Michigan's main questions were about data access by the CCP. It was hard to follow this conversation. This dude was giving off the impression he barely understood English, much less tech or business. Waste of five minutes, moving on.
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| Gary Palmer |
Gary Palmer of Alabama. Tried to shut down Chew multiple times with the tired old "yes or no", and failed quite amusingly. Blustery, pompous and a real windbag. I would have put him in the "Ugly" section, but he didn't merit even that much recognition.
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| Greg Pence |
Greg Pence of Indiana did the whole "old man shaking his fist at technology" routine and frankly it was funny AF.
"...this is the 32nd hearing we have held about privacy and big tech. Each hearing I've been part of, we've heard the same stories about our constituents' experience, and the same promises for big tech to do better."
Did this dude just whine about doing his job on National Television? The only thing this tells me is that if so many hearings have gone by and nothing has been done, some people just aren't doing their jobs. If this was supposed to convince me that it's all TikTok's fault, it sure wasn't very successful.
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| Troy Balderson |
Troy Balderson of Ohio was not especially pugnacious, and I do feel a little bad about having to put him in this section with some of these losers, but some things he said bothered me strongly on a logical level.
"Can you explain to parents back in my congressional district why it should be their burden and not to set up that guardian parental controls for their children so that they do not view content, which is encourages eating disorders or committing suicide?"
Now, I'm not a parent. Partially because I recognize that it's a lot of work. But this should be a no-brainer - Social Media is not anyone's parent, let alone TikTok. Therefore it is not the job of Social Media to filter objectionable content from the young. It is the job of parents.
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| Russ Fulcher |
Russ Fulcher of Idaho just made a five-minute speech and asked zero questions. Like, seriously, dude.
"And the whatever is what bothers me. And I'll use myself as an example again, if for whatever reason I became a target in this, I became somebody you didn't like. And I know that'd be hard to believe cuz you gotta like me. But let's say you didn't or a company didn't, or for whatever reason I became an app, app target, that artificial intelligence algorithm could be shared or spread selectively to a targeted audience that with negative information that maybe they has been paired up with that knowledge and that app to make me look really, really bad."
Tried to slip a joke in there somewhere. I appreciate that. What I didn't appreciate was that five-minute speech he could have given literally anywhere else but a hearing that was set up to elicit information from Chew Shou Zi. Fail!
The following are those who were both combative and useless. A potent combination, though not quite enough to bump them to the "Ugly" section.
Neal Dunn of Florida.
John Joyce of Pennsylvania.
Raul Ruiz of California
The following are reluctant additions into this section. They tended to be inflammatory though not over-the-top rude. Again, I didn't necessarily disagree with anything they said; that's not why they're here. They're mostly here because I don't think they raised any interesting points. At worst, their presence did not strike me as being particularly useful.
Paul Tonko of New York
Tony Cárdenas of California
Marc Veasey of Texas
Randy Weber of Texas
Angie Craig of Minnesota
Rick Allen of Georgia
Diana Harshbarger of Tenessee
Jeff Duncan of South Carolina
Now do bear in mind that these aren't always outright condemnations. Some of them were just very middle-of-the-road and it didn't feel fair to place them in the "Good" or "Ugly" section. As such, I've generally tried to be very restrained in my criticism. I haven't started getting savage yet.
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