US heading for TikTok ban
The Biden administration should soon be able to legally ban the TikTok social network, owned by the Chinese group ByteDance, in the United States.
Posted
At the end of February, the White House had already ordered federal institutions to ensure that TikTok disappears from their smartphones within thirty days.
Getty Images via AFP
The United States took a significant step on Tuesday towards a ban on the very popular application TikTok via a bill supported by the White House, in the context of growing distrust of Westerners towards the Chinese social network.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement that he “welcomed” a bill tabled the same day, which would include banning apps such as TikTok.
This text, carried by a Democratic senator and a Republican senator, “would allow the American State to prevent certain foreign states from operating technological services (…) in a way that threatens the confidential data of Americans and our national security “wrote the adviser to the White House.
“National Security”
Many US lawmakers view the viral short-form video platform, owned by Chinese group ByteDance, as a national security threat. They fear, along with a growing number of Western governments, that Beijing could access user data around the world through this application.
TikTok has been denying it for years, but tensions between the two countries and, recently, the downing of a supposed Chinese spy balloon, have raised calls to stand firm against China.
“It is widely accepted that TikTok poses a threat to our national security,” the influential elected Republican John Thune pleaded on Tuesday by presenting the text, already supported by a dozen senators. Concretely, the bill, called the Restrict Act, gives the Minister of Commerce new powers to prohibit this application.
“Muzzling freedom of expression”
A competing bill introduced in the House of Representatives also passed a key milestone in Congress last week. Banning the application would amount to “muzzling the freedom of expression” of millions of Americans, protests TikTok, which claims more than a hundred million users in the United States.
The app’s chief executive, Shou Zi Chew, will be heard by the US Congress at the end of the month. The app has already surpassed YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook in “time spent” on it by American adults, and is now trailing Netflix.
At the end of February, the White House had already ordered federal institutions to ensure that TikTok disappears from their smartphones within thirty days, pursuant to a law ratified in early January by Joe Biden. The European Commission and the Canadian government recently made similar decisions for their civil servants’ mobile phones, and the Danish parliament announced that it has asked MPs and staff to remove the app from their devices.
(AFP)
