This Big Tech giant is finally speaking up about the dangers of TikTok and its parent company’s ties to the communist Chinese government, a month after not answering questions on the Chinese-tied app’s risks to national security.
Meta Platform Inc. head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, questioned TikTok’s values in an interview with Bloomberg TV.
“TikTok, a hugely successful, highly dynamic and innovative Chinese company, is able to operate in the United States, but companies like Meta are not able to operate our social media services in China,” said Clegg to Bloomberg TV. “So there is this issue of a kind of lack of a level playing field. And in the end, there’s always an underlying issue of values: What values are the underpinning of new technologies?”
Clegg’s comments come four weeks after MRC Free Speech America reached out to eight Big Tech companies, including Meta, and one tech industry group and asked whether the anti-American TikTok app should be banned from the U.S. Unsurprisingly, all the companies responded with radio silence.
While Clegg offered Bloomberg some insights into Meta’s thoughts on TikTok, he refused to weigh in on the national security concerns.
“Look not least because TikTok is a competitor of Meta—you know I'm not going to try and sort of weigh into this and the national security considerations, which have been debated in D.C. are really for you know national security folk and for the administration to decide upon,” the Meta executive said.
The Meta executive’s comments also echo similar remarks made by fellow social media tech Snap (Snapchat) CEO Evan Spiegel, who at a tech summit on April 21 voiced support for a TikTok ban but shied away from assessing the national security risks of allowing TikTok full reign to American consumers’ data.
“We’d love that,” Spiegel said, according to Business Insider. “In the short term, that is something that would help us out.”
Spiegel and Clegg barely touched on the dangers of communist Chinese government-tied TikTok, claiming that banning TikTok is up to the U.S. government.
“It is important for us to be thoughtful and really develop a regulatory framework to deal with security concerns, especially around technology," Spiegel said. "I think based on the information that is publicly available, there are legitimate national security concerns far above my pay grade.”
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