CEO of Tiktok, Bytedance
TikTok CEO Shou Chew and FII Institute CEO Richard Attias at #FII8
Conversation with Shou Chew, "TITAN OF INDUSTRY" took place at the 8th edition of the Future Investment Initiative at King ...
About Shou Chew
Shou Chew, CEO of TikTok, has continued to address concerns about data security, child safety, and the platform's relationship with the Chinese government. In a March 2023 appearance before the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, Chew stated that ByteDance is not owned or controlled by the Chinese government, describing it as a private company. He outlined "Project Texas," an initiative he said involves storing U.S. user data on Oracle servers in the United States, overseen by American personnel. Chew also testified that TikTok does not share U.S. user data with the Chinese government and would not honor a request to do so. During a January 2025 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on child online safety, Chew described TikTok's policies, including a 13-and-up age requirement, default private accounts for users under 16, and a 60-minute screen time limit for users under 18. He stated that the company had invested more than $2 billion in trust and safety efforts that year and employed over 40,000 trust and safety professionals globally. In other public appearances, Chew has emphasized TikTok's economic impact and its use of AI. At the APEC CEO Summit in November 2024, he said the company had invested over $1.5 billion to secure U.S. user data and planned to spend 12 billion euros over the next decade on data protection in Europe. He also stated that TikTok supported nearly a quarter-million jobs in the U.S. and contributed almost $24 billion to the country's GDP. At the FII8 conference in October 2024, Chew discussed the platform's recommendation algorithm, describing it as based on machine learning and interest signals rather than follower counts. He also noted that 125,000 businesses in Saudi Arabia use the platform. Chew has stated that the company is investing billions of dollars in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, including a $12.2 million commitment to support small and medium-sized businesses.
Transcript (25 segments)
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Richard0:01
Good afternoon and thank you for your patience. It's a long, long day and it's just almost the beginning of the day. I'm extremely happy and I decided to be selfish today. This is why I asked my team that this conversation I want to moderate because Shou is one of my heroes, even if my family is making a lot of fun of me for years and years because I was one of the first users of TikTok. Thank you. And despite many people challenging me about why before going to bed I spent almost—I'm sharing some secrets with you guys—half an hour every day on TikTok. I find that it's an amazing platform what you have created despite all the critics and the challenges you are going through. But it's not the purpose today. I want to share with you that in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, almost everyone is looking at TikTok, I can tell you. If they say no, they are lying because I know that many people are forwarding me a lot of TikTok stuff. So yes or no guys, be honest. You see. So Shou is the Chief Executive Officer of TikTok and of course he is leading the overall business and bringing the company's vision to life. So just for you to understand who Shou is, he has been part of the TikTok family since inception. He was born and raised in Singapore and he attended university in London, so he holds an undergraduate degree from University College London, UCL, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. So he's a smart guy, and this is why one day he probably had this great idea of having this original spark that ignited the idea for TikTok. So what was exactly this original spark, Shou?
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Shou Chew1:51
Yeah, Richard, I think we have to start from the mission of the business. It's important because ultimately we have thousands of employees and every day they're building towards something. The mission that we have is to inspire creativity and bring joy. So that's sort of—and I'll come back to this in a second because if you use TikTok, it sounds like you do every night for 30 minutes, you could spend more time if you want. What you will find is a very creative experience, a very joyful experience. In terms of the original spark, the idea was to present content to users not based on who you followed, because back in 2012, 2013, the social network was all the rage and it's all about building your social graph, meaning getting people to follow you, building out that graph, and the content that you will see is going to be based on people that you follow. I think that's the model that many of our peers in the market still follow today. But we have brought something very new to the table. We recommend content to you not based on how many people follow you, but based on interest signals. Meaning if you have a good message, if you have a funny video, if you are a small hippo in Thailand which has gone completely viral called Moo Deng—if you haven't seen it, just search it—if you have a good message, you don't need any followers to begin with to become viral, to make sure that your message is heard by as many people around the world as possible. I think that's the difference, the key difference that we bring to the table.
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Richard3:24
But what was the main decision you made to turn almost what was a small app to what is becoming now almost a cultural phenomenon?
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Shou Chew3:32
There are a couple of things in the last 10 years. First of all, machine learning and AI enabled the recommendation algorithm to be as useful and as interesting as it is today. It's very accurate if you think about it. There's no human curation really that goes into the recommendation process. It is really about using machine learning and then matching your signal interest with potential signal interest that you could have. That's really the magic of the algorithm. Now beyond that, in the last 10 years, everybody has a smartphone now, and smartphones have cameras. So we decided that the app was not only going to be based on text, not only going to be based on pictures, but we opened up video and we made video the main format for the app itself. That's another innovation that we brought to the table. And the third is, of course, this idea that everybody should have the chance to publish. So it shouldn't just be in the hands of a small group of people. We allow essentially anyone with a camera, anyone with creativity, to be able to create something very quickly using all the tools that we give them and be able to share their message with the world. So that's really the difference that we brought.
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Richard4:47
I know you are under huge pressure and some critics. So let's make a pitch to our friends and to the millions of people who are watching us. How TikTok could be a force for good.
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Shou Chew5:02
Yeah, I think a lot of people still have this understanding, especially people who don't use the app that much, they think that the app is for young people, is dancing, is singing. Well, that's all true. There's still a lot of dancing and singing, but it's more than that now because we have more than a billion users around the world today.
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Richard5:20
How many as of today do you know?
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Shou Chew5:22
We don't disclose specifics, but it's definitely significantly larger than a billion active users around the world. If you think about the content that we have, even in this country, I was looking at the feed whenever I travel. It's my third time in the Kingdom in just this year. There is somebody called Abdullah Al Alawi, for example. He's a local creator. He shares a lot of content about local culture. For example, I learned about the—I'm going to say this wrong—the shabab? He talked about the history of the shabab, the fishing net, and the years of the wheat, and how that original practical use is married into the culture today in the local context. It's amazing. I did not know about this. I think there is a female footballer called Farah. She plays for Al-Ahli, I believe. She's on the platform and she's encouraging young women to learn about the sport, to pick up the sport. So it's no longer just about entertainment, the light dancing and singing, which is still important. It is about community, it is about education, it's about heritage, it's about culture, it's about the arts. I think that's a significant positive change to the world.
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Richard6:47
So let's continue the pitch. How TikTok could make us more creative and not just be distracted and become addicted to an app, which is—forgive me to be a bit provocative—useless? So how can it help us to be more creative? Because I will be very honest, I find great ideas as a creator of also platforms. I took two or three ideas from what I found on TikTok. So if I'm asking the question, it's because I am convinced of the answer, but I would like you to continue this speech on how can we be more creative, or how can you help us to be more creative?
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Shou Chew7:22
We provide tools. First of all, to inspire creativity is the mission itself. We talked about the mission at the start: inspire creativity, bring joy. So creativity and joy—joy is important.
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Richard7:35
We'll talk about joy. This is your DNA. The DNA is creativity and joy.
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Shou Chew7:38
Exactly. It's built into the mission statement of the company. So what we provide is, if you open the app, you click the plus sign at the bottom, you go to effects, you're going to see thousands and thousands of effects that we bring to the table to help spark people's creativity. It's a tool that enables them to express themselves better. In terms of the content pool itself, what we are seeing is that things like BookTok—BookTok is a very organic movement on the platform where people talk about books that they like. It has tens of billions of views around the world today. There is something very interesting that we launched in the US about a year ago called the STEM feed. This is a feed where it is only science and math content. We are going to launch this in the Kingdom as well, in conjunction with the Science and Technology University here. So we believe that this should be a platform that's not only about creativity and fun, but you could learn something as well. We're going to take all the STEM and math content that we can find and put it in a dedicated and specialized feed for users in this country.
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Richard8:53
So what do you think is—we spoke about the DNA—but what do you think is your responsibility, or the responsibility of TikTok, vis-à-vis humanity? Let's be ambitious. We tried at the FII Institute to have an impact on humanity. We spoke a lot here during the past few hours about how to invest for good, how to invest for purpose. So I think as a founder, you wake up in the morning and you should ask yourself, what is my legacy? What am I doing good for humanity? So what is the responsibility of TikTok?
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Shou Chew9:26
We think that the legacy is going to be defined by the mission. The mission is creativity and joy. It is important. We talked a lot about the creative components. We can translate this into economic activity. Today, in just the Kingdom, we have 125,000 businesses that use our platform. Because we talked about this earlier as well, you do not need to be famous, you don't need to have followers. If you have a good message, you're going to get an audience on TikTok. That's the difference that we bring. So businesses with good products and a good message can find it very easy to get access to a large audience on our platform, which is why they embrace it. Most of them don't pay us, by the way. They just post content on our platform. It's interesting content, they get the audience that they want. So on an economic front, I think we are contributing to the local economies that we are in as well. In terms of joy, there's one other thing that people don't talk about but we are very proud of. For a very long time, people assumed that the only way you get viral is to say something controversial, outrageous, angry, toxic, provocative, you name it. But if you look at just two angles, if you look at the top 10 videos of TikTok every single year—we publish them, we're going to publish them again very soon—they're all joyful. Every single one of them. Last year, there was a cat that looked like a dog, there was a dog that sounded like a cat. This is really very joyful types of content. And the number one creator on our platform, his name is Khaby. Khaby is a comedian. He is famous for just being entertaining. He's very creative. I'm not sure if you have seen his videos, he does his face.
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Richard11:18
Yeah, I saw. I saw Khaby was unknown before TikTok. So unlike many other platforms, he wasn't famous before. He wasn't a famous politician, he wasn't a famous soccer player, he wasn't a famous celebrity. He was a factory worker in Italy. He had talent and he became the number one creator with 160 million followers on our platform. I think the joyful and the creative and the discovery element of this will define the legacy of our company.
Let's talk now about TikTok's role in journalism, if any role exists. I'm a strong believer in traditional media, and we are doing whatever we can here to support the traditional media. This is why next door you have our media square where we have all the traditional media. I have a lot of respect for them because they have the power to share knowledge, to share information, to give access to knowledge to many people. But with news and information moving to social media, do you think that traditional news sources like TV and print become obsolete?
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Shou Chew12:24
I don't think so. I have a lot of respect for what you call traditional media. I think there's a lot of value in editorial standards, in robust journalism. I think this is an industry that we want to help. We want to help them reach a bigger audience as well. So our platform is open to many news media outlets and many publishers, and a lot of them embrace our platform and have found much larger audiences than they could have in a more traditional sense, just print and digital. On TikTok, some of them have tens of millions of followers and they're able to bring their robust news to an even greater audience. It's something we have been working closely with the industry to power. In the Kingdom, we are working with SRMG Academy, for example, to help onboard more journalists, especially tech journalists, to better understand how to use TikTok to get a bigger audience. So I see us living in a very symbiotic relationship rather than one of replacement.
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Richard13:33
At the FII Institute, we publish every year the FII Priority Compass, which is a big survey asking many people in the world, thousands and thousands of people, what is your first priority? To make a long story short, this year 2024, for the third consecutive year, priority number one is cost of living, priority number two is something new—governance—and number three is healthcare. Back to governance, we were asking more questions. Just to share with our friends and members, these results are on our app now. We read the report this morning. 75% of the people in the world consider that the world is not going in the right direction, and 66% consider that their own country is not going in the right direction—except, and trust me total objectivity, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. But the big majority consider that their country is not going in the right direction. Do you think that TikTok is eroding public trust also in government and institutions, because they always pick this information through social media? Social media are very influential, as you know, and this is how public opinion is building its own opinion. So do you think TikTok is eroding this trust or highlighting this trust?
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Shou Chew14:55
I think we bring a voice to many people. We bring creativity, we bring joy. We also ensure that dangerous misinformation has no place on our platform. The way we govern—we have a set of rules that we call our Community Guidelines, and these guidelines are available on our website. It's about 30 pages long today. We change it and update it every now and again with refreshed guidelines. In the guidelines, you will find things that we allow or disallow on the platform. There are various rules. There are things that we absolutely do not allow, like dangerous misinformation, like violence. We take it off the platform. Then there are other things that we do not allow for our younger users. So if you are below a certain age, our content is actually more restricted for you. We have a more restricted experience. We don't allow you to use a few other features on our platform, like no direct messages by default if you're below 16, no live streaming if you're below 18. We put some restrictions on how much time you can spend on the platform if you are below 18, and we give parents a lot of tools to control the experience of their teenagers on our app. I have three children myself. I understand that parents need tools to be able to—on the one hand, you want your children to be part of the digital world because that's the world that we live in. On the other, I think we all need more tools to be able to have conversations, to build a healthy relationship between our children and their digital devices and apps that they use. So I think we're very aligned on many of these things. But generally speaking, the fact that this platform exists and it gives the normal person a voice—the small business, the soccer player, someone like Abdullah Al Alawi a voice to share about their heritage, their culture, their history, and their perspective on the world—I think that's actually a net positive. We just have to make sure that our Community Guidelines are well enforced.
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Richard17:04
Two short last questions. First one: which advice will you give to the young entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia and the region if they want one day to create something equivalent to TikTok? Or how do you start? The DNA and entrepreneurship mindset. So what are the two advices that you will give to the young entrepreneurs?
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Shou Chew17:27
Yeah, my experience of talking to younger entrepreneurs is typically I learn more from them than I find that I can say, because the times are changing. A lot of times, as companies get bigger, we spend too much of our time in the internal building and the mechanisms. Sometimes meeting young entrepreneurs, they're so close to their craft, they're so close to their product, it's so refreshing. If I would say one thing, it would be to continue to do that. Get first information. Don't rely on your managers to write reports for you. Go speak to your users. Don't rely on reading reports on how AI works. Just go download the app and try it. Just try it yourself. Don't lose that, because I think as businesses grow, we tend to lose that.
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Richard18:15
At the FII, as you know, we look forward. The closing session in a couple of days will be about the world in 2030, how do we see it, and even maybe 2050, which is literally tomorrow. So what do you think are the opportunities and the challenges for TikTok by 2030 and then by 2050?
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Shou Chew18:36
I think it's going to be around three or four things. The first is trust. I think our industry is undergoing a period where people have questions: how are you thinking about this, how are you thinking about that? In the countries that we operate in, we are very global platforms in the sense that our users are all around the world, but in every country that we operate, the experience is deeply local. So earning trust locally, earning trust just generally as an industry, is going to be a big challenge for all of us. Trust earning is not about being able to market yourself very well, although that helps. Ultimately, it's going to be based on the things that you have done. Did you fundamentally address people's concerns? And AI—that will be the technology part, which will be my third part. I think embracing technology and making sure that—this is clearly moving at a very fast speed—so we need to stay on top of it and understand the impact it's going to have on our business, and that in itself is challenging. And then of course, it is making sure that we continue to hear what our users want. We built the e-commerce experience because our users wanted it. They saw something they like, they say, 'Can I just click and transact? Why can't I do that?' So it was in response to what they told us that we built that. It's important to continue to do that. That would be the second thing. And finally, it's just keeping the organization fresh, young talent, people coming in with bright ideas and good ideas, making sure that they can be heard and they don't get lost.
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Richard20:22
Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen. Shou, the man behind TikTok. Thank you.
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Shou Chew20:28
Thank you.