TikTok CEO seems on TikTok to warn customers concerning the TikTok ban

TikTok is rolling out a appeal offensive forward of Thursday’s congressional listening to, placing CEO Shou Zi Chew in customers’ feeds to warn them about a looming ban. Chew posted a minute-long video to the ByteDance subsidiary’s official TikTok account, rallying customers to defend the app.

Chew’s video outlines factors he’ll in all probability hit in his Home Power and Commerce Committee testimony later this week, the place legislators will query whether or not the app’s Chinese language possession makes it untrustworthy. That features the information that TikTok now has 150 million American customers — one thing news outlets recently reported based mostly on advance details about his testimony. “That’s virtually half of the US coming to TikTok,” he observes, noting the quantity consists of 5 million US companies. “Nearly all of these are small and medium companies.”

We additionally be taught that TikTok has 7,000 American staff, which is lower than the ten,000 or extra that TikTok aimed for in 2020 however a giant leap over the 1,400 US headcount that yr.

However on to the unhealthy information. “Some politicians have began speaking about banning TikTok,” Chew says. Whereas it’s a barely odd evaluation on condition that the “beginning” happened almost three years ago and the “speaking about” was signing an executive order issuing a ban, it’s true that the difficulty has morphed from a nebulous Donald Trump demand to a mainstream political place up to now few months. “Now this might take TikTok away from all 150 million of you.” Chew doesn’t do something as gauche as name for customers to take part within the democratic course of by contacting their native congressperson, however he does ask them to “let me know within the feedback what you need your elected representatives to find out about what you like about TikTok.” The highest remark to this point: “You already know one thing went incorrect when the boss has to indicate up.”

However it’s not shocking Chew is lastly declaring an apparent truth: locking TikTok out of the US can be a virtually unprecedented transfer that massive numbers of Individuals would discover, and TikTok is betting they gained’t prefer it.