Lawmakers grill TikTok over China connection

SEN. ED MARKEY "The problem is clear - big tech preys on children and teens to make more money."

Social media executives took their turn in the hot seat Tuesday in a Senate hearing on child safety online.

Executives from TikTok, Youtube and Snapchat fielded tough questioning on how their platforms were working to protect young users.

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR: "Are you going to get drugs off Snapchat?"

But perhaps the most fire was reserved for TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance.

SEN. TED CRUZ: "Are you going to answer this question, or were you instructed not to answer this question?"

Some senators alleged that the app known for viral dance moves obscured a more insidious intent: harvesting Americans' data for the Chinese government.

SEN. MARSHA BLACKBURN: "If the Chinese Communist Party ask you for U.S. user data, what is to stop you from providing it?"

Senator Marsha Blackburn, the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee subcommittee, pressed Michael Beckerman, TikTok's head of public policy for the Americas, on whether the company could resist giving users' data to China's government if material were to be demanded.

"We do not share information with the Chinese government..."

Beckerman testified that TikTok's U.S. user data is stored in the United States, with backups in Singapore.

"We have a world-renowned U.S. based security team that handles access."

Republican former President Donald Trump had sought to bar TikTok - a popular platform used by millions of Americans - from U.S. app stores, saying it collected data from American users that could be obtained by China's government and posed a threat to U.S. national security.

Democratic President Joe Biden later revoked Trump's plan, but sought a broader review of various foreign-controlled apps.

Cracking down on Big Tech - especially social media platforms - is one area that sees rare and broad bipartisan support in Congress. Lawmakers in both parties are especially. keen on reining in the world's largest social network, Facebook, after a damaging leak of internal documents revealed how the company put profit ahead of users' wellbeing and safety.