Politicians Call for U.S. TikTok Ban
Photo Credit: TikTok
Some American politicians are calling for a nationwide ban on the social media app TikTok. ByteDance, a Chinese company and the owner of TikTok, has already been banned from certain devices by the US Congress in December last year, to help minimize security risks. TikTok and ByteDance have been facing calls for bans from critics for almost three years now, out of fear that China may use the app to steal data from Americans on the platform.
The US government has had suspicions about TikTok for a few years. Former US President Donald Trump attempted to ban the app in 2020, but was unsuccessful, being rescinded by US President Joe Biden in June 2021. In 2022, Forbes reported that ByteDance employees were accessing the user information of American TikTokers, which led to bipartisan efforts skyrocketing to regulate its limits.
Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat, urged Apple and Google to remove the app from their stores in a letter sent early February, due to the possibility of user data being stored in China. However, it is currently still available to users, although in some cases, such as for people in certain state universities and government positions, the ban has been approved.
The US Office of Management and Budget’s director, along with other offices, have been given two months to find a standard procedure for employees to erase TikTok from their government owned devices. The White House, Homeland Security, and other departments’ employees have already banned TikTok from their government owned devices and are encouraged to remove the app from their personal devices as well. The House of Representatives’ chief administrator, Catherine Szpindor, told lawmakers and staff to remove it for security reasons, according to The Guardian.
Indonesia has temporarily banned TikTok, according to The Guardian, while India has banned over 50 Chinese apps including TikTok. Some other countries have attempted to make national bans. However, they have not lasted more than a few months. The US government is trying harder to deal with security risks from China in the past few years by adding more and more Chinese companies to a blacklist.