TikTok pulled out of a public roundtable with the House Select Committee on China set for this month, according to a Thursday statement from Chair John Moolenaar. The committee had negotiated to put TikTok’s chief security officer in front of members to answer for Chinese government access to American user data and for how the algorithm works. Moolenaar told Bloomberg the company backed out on August 27, one day after the Meta settlement with state AGs, and that TikTok told the committee that deal left it unable to take child-safety questions, though he says those weren’t on the agenda and TikTok hasn’t offered its own account. Moolenaar wants the session rescheduled by year’s end under the divest-or-ban law, whose security concerns the January deal was supposed to have put to rest.
