A pattern seems to have emerged that whenever a big tech CEO steps up to testify in front of Congress, United States lawmakers go ahead and make fools of themselves with their lines of questioning – proving they have little to no understanding of the world of the internet and personal computing in the 21st century.
It happened with then-Facebook (now Meta) CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and it happened again today with TikTok CEO Shou Chew. The whole ordeal played out like a witch hunt orchestrated to doom the social media platform to oblivion, and not as a pursuit of knowledge and truth. Acclaimed horror author Stephen King was baffled by the circus, and took some time out of his day to call out the clueless Congressmen scrutinizing the company:
While King maintained that he has no strong feelings swinging in either direction when it comes to the prospect of banning TikTok on U.S. soil, the It author didn’t hold back in pointing out Congress’s ineptitude when it comes to the tech and social media landscape.
The scrutiny of TikTok by the U.S. government, while based on concerns for user privacy and data falling into the wrong hands, has been a puzzling affair. Thus far, it’s also been extremely single-sided, which almost makes it seem like the whole inquiry was orchestrated by a competing social media platform.
While the TikTok saga unfolds, in the meantime, celebrity YouTube and Twitter accounts have been getting hacked left and right, at an increasingly alarming rate. Perhaps these are the sorts of hot-button issues that legislators should be turning their attention to.