“There are more than 100 million voices in this country, and I think it’ll be a real shame if our users around the world are not able to hear them anymore,” Chew said Tuesday during an exclusive interview with The Washington Post, referring to the number of U. ”But he said he has also had to navigate discussions with people who have never used TikTok but still argue in tweets and TV interviews that the app is an insidious threat — and that the company’s arguments are compromised, foolish or naive. But ByteDance has played an active role in TikTok’s shift to defend itself more aggressively in Washington, Chew said, and he could not provide a specific instance on which he had pushed back against a decree from ByteDance’s leadership