Information & Ethics committee  I focus on Canada. I don't know what the exact number is, or what you would define as a ban. TikTok is available in most parts of the world—

Information & Ethics committee  I'm happy to take that. In terms of the government device ban, there have been a few countries that have put forward those policies, including Canada. We've engaged with the Treasury Board Secretariat and the CIO's office to try to better understand what criteria were used to identify only TikTok and to single out TikTok, and whether those same criteria have been applied to other platforms.

Information & Ethics committee  I will let my colleague, David, answer that one.

Information & Ethics committee  Great. I'd be happy to start on those few questions. I appreciate it and the opportunity to be here. First, I'm not familiar with the figure you cited. What I can tell you is that we issued our most recent community guidelines enforcement report. It's like a transparency report that we issue quarterly.

Information & Ethics committee  I'm happy to respond to that as well. Essentially, the way the TikTok algorithm works is that it looks at signals on how you interact with videos. There are positive signals: Do you like it, comment on it or share it? Do you watch the whole video? Do you watch it again? There are also negative signals: Do you swipe away from it within a couple of seconds?

Information & Ethics committee  We have an office in Toronto. As we've said, our operations in Canada are subject to Canadian privacy law. We're happy to engage further. I'm happy to follow up with some more information about how we protect user data, particularly for younger users.

Information & Ethics committee  I'd be happy to.

Information & Ethics committee  Sure. ByteDance is actually a global company. It was founded in China but has offices around the world. As I mentioned in my opening statement, of the board, which it is ultimately responsible for it, three of those five members are Americans.

Information & Ethics committee  They're too young. In Canada, you have to be 13 to use TikTok, and it's actually 14 in Quebec. No, they don't use it. I will scroll it with them sometimes and we'll find videos that we want to watch together, but they're too young to have their own accounts.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of committee. As you said, my name's Steve de Eyre. I'm the director of public policy and government affairs for TikTok Canada. I'm joined by my colleague, David Lieber, who's our head of privacy public policy for the Americas. He's on Zoom from Washington.