America took a significant step toward a ban on the hugely popular TikTok app via a White House-backed bill on Tuesday, amid growing Western distrust of the Chinese social network.
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US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement that he “welcomes” a bill tabled on the same day that would ban apps like TikTok, among other things.
This text, borne by a Democratic senator and a Republican senator, “would allow the American state to prevent certain foreign states from using technological services (…) in a way that violates Americans’ confidential data and our national Security threatened,” the White House adviser wrote.
Chinese group ByteDance’s viral short-video platform is viewed by many US lawmakers as a national security threat.
They, along with a growing number of Western governments, fear that Beijing could access user data around the world through this app, something TikTok has denied for years.
“It is generally accepted that TikTok poses a threat to our national security,” said influential Republican Senator John Thune on Tuesday at the presentation of the text.
Specifically, the bill, dubbed the Restrict Act, will give the Secretary of Commerce new powers to ban this use.
A competing bill introduced in the House of Representatives also reached a major milestone in Congress last week.
Banning the application would be tantamount to “gagging the freedom of expression” of millions of Americans, protests TikTok, which claims to have more than 100 million users in the United States.
The app has already surpassed YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook in terms of time spent by American adults and is now hot on Netflix.
As early as late February, the White House had instructed federal authorities to ensure that TikTok disappeared from their smartphones within 30 days, in accordance with a law ratified by Joe Biden in early January.