The Los Angeles Post

Bipartisan lawmakers push for TikTok ban

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Anti-TikTok pressure is mounting in Congress from both sides of the aisle, with lawmakers proposing legal measures to ban the popular video sharing app from use in the U.S. to requests for dominant app stores to drop it.

  • The push is largely based on concerns that the app, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, poses national security and privacy risks based on the data TikTok is able to collect on users’ activity on their devices both on and off the app.
  • Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) introduced a bill last week that would ban TikTok in the U.S. It is the first of its kind to be introduced this Congress, following a similar proposal led by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) last year.

What are lawmakers saying?

 

“The big problem with TikTok is that it is a backdoor for the Chinese Communist Party into the personal data and the personal lives of every American who uses it, that includes especially our kids,” Hawley told The Hill.

Earlier this week, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) asked the chief executive officers of Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores, warning its “vast influence and aggressive data collection pose a specific threat.” Spokespeople for Apple and Google did not respond to requests for comment.

  • Bennet said that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is compelled by Chinese law to comply with requests from the government for access to data from such apps, which could potentially allow the Chinese government to access and collect information on American citizens.
  • Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) raised similar issues as Hawley about TikTok’s data collection and the possibility of TikTok being used as a potential propaganda tool. Warner said the app’s data collection is not “dissimilar to some of the collection of American companies,” but his concerns are amplified by supposed ties to China.