Sen. Marco Rubio, R-FL., on Tuesday introduced bipartisan legislation that would ban the popular app TikTok from operating within the United States over national security concerns.
Rubio’s bill—the Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence, and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party, or ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act—already has bipartisan support in the House, with Reps. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., authoring companion legislation.
“The federal government has yet to take a single meaningful action to protect American users from the threat of TikTok,” Rubio said in a statement. “This isn’t about creative videos—this is about an app that is collecting data on tens of millions of American children and adults every day. We know it’s used to manipulate feeds and influence elections. We know it answers to the People’s Republic of China. There is no more time to waste on meaningless negotiations with a CCP-puppet company. It is time to ban Beijing-controlled TikTok for good.”
TikTok is owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance. Numerous federal officials, including FBI Director Chris Wray, have testified that the Chinese Communist Party has authority over all Chinese companies, which “allows them to manipulate content, and if they want to, to use it for influence operations.”
www.nextgov.com/cxo-briefing/2022/12/lawmakers-intro-bill-ban-tiktok-us/380817/