A bill to outlaw the usage of the well-known social networking site Tiktok in the nation has been introduced by senators from the United States.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio of the Senate Intelligence Committee, one of the bill’s supporters, claimed that the app was more than simply a tool for making films and that the Chinese government used it extensively to collect sensitive information from Americans.
“This is about an app that is collecting data on tens of millions of American children and adults every day,” he wrote in a statement shared on Tuesday.
He added, “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.”
The proposed legislation, in general, is aimed at protecting “Americans from the threat posed by certain foreign adversaries using current or potential future social media companies that those foreign adversaries control to surveil Americans, learn sensitive data about Americans, or spread influence campaigns, propaganda, and censorship.”
However, the bill specifically calls out TikTok and Bytedance, its parent company, as well as other divisions of the business, as social media platforms of concern.
The new bill comes after a flurry of moves made by states with Republican governors. Several states, including Texas, South Dakota, and Maryland, have taken action to limit the use of Tiktok on equipment owned by the government.
Similar restrictions have been placed on the use of the app by the US military, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security.
Former president Donald Trump issued an executive order to prohibit the app until it was sold to an American corporation just before the end of his administration. The order was contested in court, and the current Biden government later overturned it.
