Asian Tech Press (Oct 27) -- The short video platform TikTok attended a U.S. congressional hearing on Tuesday, and publicly responded to concerns about online protection for youth and data security.

This is the first time that TikTok has participated in such a hearing. In December 2019 and February 2020, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley asked TikTok and Apple to attend the hearing twice in the name of national security, but both TikTok and Apple refused to attend.

At the hearing, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, cited a previous Wall Street Journal report exposing another social media giant, Facebook, as harmful to teenagers' mental health, saying, "TikTok's algorithm can push young users into content glorifying eating disorders, drugs, violence." And the senator then asked TikTok if it was taking action to curb such content.

Michael Beckerman, TikTok's head of public policy for the Americas, did not respond directly to the question, but defended the article as not showing "an authentic experience that an actual user would have" and not being convincing enough, and also responded that TikTok has made many improvements in controlling algorithms and content health.

Regarding the push for legislation to strengthen protections for youth Internet safety, like Snapchat, Youtube and other companies, TikTok expressed conditional support for the legislation. And Beckman said the company would be happy to support the new bill if lawmakers improve the way they currently handle age verification for TikTok.