Social Media Senate Hearing: Point Scoring and Talking Points

It’s doubtful much of substance was achieved from today’s Senate hearing into “big tech and the online child sexual exploitation crisis,” starring a lineup of social media CEOs. As is typical, the CEOs recited jargonistic talking points and floundered when a cavalcade of senators demanded yes-or-no answers to a variety of questions. The senators made some good points about the now widely chronicled harms young people experience on Instagram, TikTok or Snap. But there was also a fair degree of senatorial point scoring and grandstanding, particularly from Republicans obsessed with getting TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew to concede that TikTok's parent ByteDance is an arm of the Chinese Communist Party.

Sen. Tom Cotton, in particular, came across as nearly McCarthyite in his questioning of Chew, asking about Chew’s time living in China, his citizenship (Singaporean), whether he had ever applied for Chinese citizenship (no); whether he was associated with the Chinese Communist Party (no); and noting that the Chinese government bought a stake in TikTok’s parent, ByteDance, the day before Chew was appointed TikTok CEO. Chew said the timing was “a coincidence,” at which Cotton chortled in disbelief. How any of that relates to the stated subject of the hearing was not apparent.