Senator faces backlash for asking TikTok CEO [Singaporean] if he’s a secret Chinese communist

‘Happy to provide additional basic facts to you or your staff that I learned in elementary school. Ask anytime,’ California Democrat tells Tom Cotton

Tom Cotton is facing widespread criticism after he asked Singaporean TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew if had “ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party”.

The Arkansas Republican senator pursued the much-ridiculed line of questioning during a Senate hearing on child safety on social media on Wednesday, which was attended by a number of big tech CEOs such as Mr Chew.

“You said today, as you often say, that you live in Singapore – of what nation are you a citizen?” Mr Cotton asked.

“Singapore,” the CEO responded.

…

“Have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party?” Mr Cotton then asked.

“Senator, I’m Singaporean – no,” Mr Chew responded.

Unable to let the matter go, Mr Cotton asked: “Have you ever been associated or affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party?”

“No, senator, again, I’m Singaporean,” the tech CEO said.

DontMakeMoreBabies, (edited )

That's a terrible question but people should be very leery of TikTok or frankly anything tech that has a significant Chinese share. You cannot realistically separate Chinese businesses from the Chinese government.

They are good at supply chain espionage and not above using something like an app for PsyOp campaigns.

Edit: Just to get ahead of any 'But the US....' Where are the Uyghur prison camps again?

queermunist,
@queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

You cannot realistically separate Chinese businesses from the Chinese government.

You cannot realistically separate US businesses from the US government either, but in the US it’s the businesses that are in control.

match,
@match@pawb.social avatar

Remember to also oppose prison labor in the US.

squiblet,
squiblet avatar

The US government and social media companies do have some shady practices, and some people would conclude that means it’s OK to install TikTok… I would conclude the opposite, that one should avoid social media apps from both countries.

captainjaneway,
@captainjaneway@lemmy.world avatar

It was pretty fucking stupid to ask him those questions. In addition, being a member of the CCP isn’t as big of a deal as this senator is making it out to be. We aren’t living in McCarthyism are we? Are we afraid of ideas?

America is afraid of ideas though. We have a long history of banning ideas from within our borders. By way of example, ideological restrictions on naturalization. We basically didn’t allow people to become citizens if they believed in communism as a valid government structure.

If the CEO of TikTok was born in China and moved to Singapore (or America for that matter), does that preclude him from doing business with America? Why? Are we so insecure as a nation that we must ban an entire country from our internet activity?

I’ll be the first to admit that TikTok - and apps like it - are security vulnerabilities. However, this entire debate has nothing to do with national security. If it were, Meta or X would also be under fire for selling advertising/user data to foreign countries, no? Plenty of these social media companies have entire sectors of their organization providing APIs and SAAS solutions for consuming data. Twitter has something which is essentially a firehose of all tweets being posted in any country that match a search query of yours. Is that not a security risk? It comes with geo information, timestamps, hashtags, urls, etc.

If this is about security, focus on user protections. The EU has shown a lot of promise in this area. I was the first to say “you can’t moderate the internet”, but they’ve done it. If you’ve ever been to a country within the EU in the past 5 years, you’ll notice those “accept/deny cookie” popups are far less spammy and easier to deny. In addition, most companies I’ve worked for in America have adhered to GDPR standards.

I believe we should protect locations, names, birthdays, emails, phone numbers, addresses, etc. Data should be opt-in and not opt-out. Is this hard to mandate? Yes. Of course there are going to be bad actors. But laws should not be written to catch all criminals. They should be written to promote what our society values. Do we value privacy or not?

I’d be far more impressed with a senator questioning tech companies about their data protections and their willingness to agree to not sell user data. But I somehow doubt that’s going to happen in our Congress.

Cylusthevirus,
Cylusthevirus avatar

What the fuck? The CCP is no more Communist than North Korea is a Democratic Republic. I don't give a shit about the CCP's ideas because there's only one they seem to care about: power. You can tell because of how they treat their own people. Corporations operating out of China are either controlled by the CCP behind the scenes or their leadership gets disappeared if they get too critical. It's happened a number of times; ask Jack Ma and several others ... if you can find them.

The fucking CCP is every bit as bad as the damned Nazis and anyone that simps for them should go live under their regime. I'm sure you'll have a great social credit score. Just don't depict Emperor Xi as Winnie the Pooh or watch the fuck out.

captainjaneway,
@captainjaneway@lemmy.world avatar

I’m not a CCP apologist, if that’s what you gathered. I believe all corporations in America should be held to the same security standards and requirements to protect consumer information.

I think you might be overlooking my main point: no government should be given American citizen data, including China. We deserve senators who can adequately solve these problems rather than attacking a person based on their vague ethnic associations with a country or countries.

Meta, Twitter/X, Reddit, etc. have been selling data to foreign governments for decades. Just because TikTok is Chinese owned doesn’t mean they’re the only ones guilty. And this senator is shifting the argument from a personal privacy one to a xenophobic one. He’s wasting our time and hurting our ability to achieve material changes in our law that will protect us from the CCP, Russia, Iran, etc.

Cylusthevirus,
Cylusthevirus avatar

Then what's the stuff in your original post about "being afraid of ideas?" Which ideas, exactly, were you referring to? Being nominally Communist and functionally Fascist?

The CCP are not an ethnic or national group, they're a malevolent political movement and opposing them is the farthest thing from xenophobia. They run China and create untold misery for Chinese citizens. Being originally from Singapore does not mean you're not working for the CCP and that is absolutely relevant to this situation. Data privacy is one issue, nation state surveillance is another. There are quantitative and qualitative differences between them and both must be addressed. Google, Meta, and Amazon et al need to be reigned in, broken up, and some board members should see jail time. TikTok, (yet another front for the CCP like ALL Chinese Corps), needs to be handled differently and the CCP's malfeasance should be exposed and talked about.

Compare and contrast Huawei and say, Cisco. Cisco's equipment is occasionally annoying and bad for consumers and their business practices suck. Huawei equipment is a national security risk. Big difference and you can't even get into that without referencing the CCP because they're driving it.

Tom Cotton's a dipshit and worded the question in the dumbest possible way, but stopped clock, etc.

captainjaneway,
@captainjaneway@lemmy.world avatar

I’m opposed to their ideology, I’m not afraid of it existing in my borders. This is just the argument of the tolerant of the intolerant and I frankly don’t know where I land on that. I understand the premise, but intolerance seems like a paradoxical way to be tolerant.

Tarquinn2049,

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Already fully fleshed out. Tolerating intolerance breaks the social contract.

GiddyGap,

Probably just the typical racial profiling from the GOP.

JJROKCZ, (edited )

I mean, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn he wasn’t and isn’t aware that Singapore is a sovereign nation separate from China. Most of my family is unaware of that fact and we’re also from the Midwest

Anamnesis,

I’m guessing he’s mixing it up with Hong Kong, where one could plausibly ask if someone was a member of the CCP. Insane to double down on it though.

Cadeillac,
@Cadeillac@lemmy.world avatar

I swear he doesn’t represent all of us down here

kent_eh,

I mean he is an elected representative.

ira,

Is this projection? Why hasn’t Cotton denied being a member of the CCP, is there something he’s hiding? He sure claims to know quite a lot about what’s going on behind the scenes in China, maybe somebody should check this out

dhork,

Plot twist: turns out Cotton is really a founding member of the ICP.

Wodge,
@Wodge@lemmy.world avatar

He has no working knowledge of what he refers to as “sticky metal” or magnets.

TWeaK,

I really wanted Shou to ask Cotton if he was affiliated with Russia.

gregorum,

https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/746e8cca-a831-4fe8-9bda-df155ec9dbe1.jpeg

FluffyPotato,

“Ah yes, Singapore. Now exactly where in China is that located?”

NOT_RICK,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

I would pay a handsome sum to watch Tom Cotton attempt to point to Singapore on a map

Tarquinn2049,

I’m not even certain he’d be able to point to China on an unlabeled map.

kent_eh,

Or any country that isn’t the USA.

DogPeePoo,

<points to China>

SnotFlickerman,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

He only faces backlash from rational people, who somehow consistently seem to be in the minority.

Let’s not pretend his base doesn’t fucking love him for being a racist, xenophobic piece of shit.

Like we’ve seen with Trump, this kind of shit gets Republican votes.

platypus_plumba,

I have a question, and I do not have supporting evidence for it, but maybe people here know if it is true or not. So, I’ll ask that first.

Is it true that TikTok promotes educational content in Asia while it promotes shallow content in the US?

If so (again, I’ve read this but I don’t hace first hand evidence), why?

mmcintyre,

Could it be they actually regulate the tech industry? Like, with laws and whatnot?

platypus_plumba,

Is that an honest question? I do not know. I’m ignorant and asking questions.

bustrpoindextr,

“oh yeah Singapore, I get that Singapore Mei fun at the Chinese restaurant all the time, what part of China is Singapore again?”

Zess,

I’ll play devil’s advocate. Being Singaporean doesn’t preclude him from having ties to the CCP. Trump is American but clearly has many ties to Russian politics. Whether any of that matters is another question, but the way the article framed this interaction was stupid.

PorradaVFR,

To be fair, Cotton is an utter dipshit so his ignorance is genuine.

kent_eh,

To be fair, Cotton is an utter dipshit so his ignorance is genuine.

And yet he was able to get enough votes to get elected…

As much of a moron as he clearly is, the voters must be even worse.

PorradaVFR,

I suspect it’s the rationale of “he’s our moron”. They’re fine with incompetence and corruption if it hurts the other side more than their own.

LarmyOfLone,

That’s ignoring all the systems, rules, gatekeeping, money, power, influence, propaganda etc that got him served up to the voters. And what was the alternative? We need to just select like 10.000 random people as representatives so the systems can’t prefilter and bias the selection anymore.

themeatbridge,

Are we sure that his name is actually Cotton? Like maybe someone asked once, and he had to check the back of his underwear?

BossDj,

I read this whole event picturing Cotton from King of the Hill.

Also, “So are you Chinese or Japanese?”

EdibleFriend,
@EdibleFriend@lemmy.world avatar

Hey George glassed himself

kellyaster,
kellyaster avatar

"After consulting with colleagues, I'd like to retract my previous statement. My name is Polyester Blend.

Lev_Astov,
@Lev_Astov@lemmy.world avatar

tbf, if the guy was a Chinese communist, it’d have to be secret, I guess.

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