TikTok CEO Shou Chew to testify before Congress

Yahoo Finance Live anchors Julie Hyman and Brad Smith discuss the expectations for TikTok CEO Shou Chew’s testimony before Congress, which will see Chew attempt to convince Congress of the app’s safety.

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BRAD SMITH: TikTok is heading to the Hill. CEO Shou Chew will testify in front of a House committee later on today. Now, this as Congress weighs a bipartisan bill to ban the app nationwide. Lawmakers have accused TikTok-- owned by a Chinese company, by Dance, of course-- they've accused them of spying on Americans and pushing propaganda. The app currently claims 150 billion users and-- no.

JULIE HYMAN: Million

BRAD SMITH: Million users in the US alone, and those users are loyal, of course, we do know. In a Washington Post poll, 41% of US adults overall supported banning the app, but that support dropped to just 17% among daily users, 54% of whom outright oppose the ban here. So this set to begin at 10:00 AM Eastern time, and of course, we're going to have some boots on the ground coverage there.

But there have been so many pieces that have taken place to even get TikTok to the growth that it's seen, whether those figures are actually true or not right now in terms of the growth that we've seen even over the past two years. But at the end of the day, I think there's no question about the prominence among the most valuable cohort of social media users, which is Gen Z and even younger, that TikTok has been able to attract. And this is also a geopolitical issue time and time again, every time that this comes up, whether that be during the Trump administration or now during the Biden administration.

JULIE HYMAN: I was squinting at our chart that had the by cohort, by age the TikTok users, because like it doesn't have the youngest people on there, which is kind of weird, right? Under 18, I would think, is a pretty significant user base also of TikTok. But I guess-- and although these numbers don't seem to be from TikTok, but TikTok doesn't want to emphasize those younger users because part-- that's partially the cohort that is under scrutiny by Congress.

It seems like there are sort of two issues at play here. One, there's the issue of is the app in and of itself a harm in some way? Is it a harm to young people? And members of Congress expected to zero in on the idea that under 16 or young users in China are subject to a different TikTok than young users in the United States. So there's that aspect.

And then there is the aspect, of course, of the geopolitical part of it and whether, indeed, China is using TikTok to gather intelligence on US citizens, whether China is using TikTok even to spread propaganda, for example. Is it that kind of vehicle? So you have these two kind of different things at play here. And I think both of them are going to get attention during that hearing today.

BRAD SMITH: And that core kind of younger user that you were talking about, that's where other social media platforms have run into issues in the past, whether that be Facebook and their subsidiaries, Instagram, for instance, and how they are either serving up or the algorithm is pushing certain types of content to those users which had come into their own level of questioning among lawmakers in Washington D.C. But then, additionally, even with YouTube, YouTube has run into issues with that.

And that's not necessarily considered the same type of social media platform as is a Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. But at the same time, there is still so much focus on protecting younger users. But at the same time, I think it's also just regulators trying to wrap their heads around the astronomic growth that we've seen of TikTok. Even though it seems like much of the growth that we've seen to this point, it's really already not just been done, it's been monetized. It's been so seeped in to young and just popular culture now, too.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, it's true.

BRAD SMITH: The influencer economy.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, I share your skepticism over that 150 million user, but maybe.