Australian lawmakers grill TikTok, Meta officials over China links, foreign interference, Covid-19 origins

Executives were questioned on their companies’ links to China, alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang and restricting details about Covid-19’s origins on their platforms

The committee also debated whether to ban WeChat in Australia, despite researchers arguing the move would hurt the country’s democracy and social cohesion

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Meta’s Mia Garlick (left, on screen) and Josh Machin (right, on screen) at the Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media at Parliament House in Canberra. Photo: AAP/dpa

Published: 9:10pm, 11 Jul 2023Updated: 9:24pm, 11 Jul 2023

Australian representatives of TikTok and Meta on Tuesday faced a grilling from lawmakers in Canberra over the platforms’ efforts to combat foreign interference, in scenes reminiscent of the congressional pile-on faced by TikTok’s chief executive in the United States in March.

The inquiry, aimed at studying ways in which Australia’s democracy was harmed by foreign interference through social media, took a combative turn with the prominent China hawk, Senator James Paterson, presiding over the hearing.

Paterson sought to make the hearing specifically about China, as he questioned the TikTok representatives about China’s alleged rights abuses in Xinjiang and alluded to the conspiracy theory that Covid-19 originated from Wuhan – asking if content relating to the theory was categorised as misinformation by the platforms.

TikTok’s Australian director of public policy Ella Woods-Joyce said the company did not “censor or promote content based on any political sensitivity”, but Paterson asked her why only “5.6 per cent” of TikTok content on Xinjiang in August 2020 was critical of the Communist Party, citing research from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank.

“So it’s just a coincidence, that 95 per cent of the content about Xinjiang on TikTok is positive, when bodies like Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International, and the United Nations and many governments around the world, said there’s either crimes against humanity, genocide, or other serious human rights abuses happening? Does that sound natural to you?” he said.

“Let me ask you your opinion, do you think there are human rights abuses occurring in Xinjiang?”

Similar to questions faced by TikTok’s chief executive Shou Zi Chew in March, Paterson also asked Woods-Joyce if TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, was a Chinese company and whether it had an “internal Communist Party committee”.