With Shou Zi Chew, the social media platform’s CEO, testifying before Congress on Thursday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), announced that the planned ban on TikTok would be brought forward.
China has access to TikTok user data, McCarthy said in a tweet on Sunday. “It is quite disturbing that the CEO of TikTok cannot be honest and accept what we already know to be true,” McCarthy wrote. Legislation to protect Americans from electronic encroachment by the Chinese Communist Party will be proposed by the House.
In recent months, a number of lawmakers have introduced bills that would make it illegal to download and use TikTok in the United States.
According to McCarthy, there is already a “bipartisan concern” among lawmakers about the security threats posed by the social media platform TikTok. He said he would support a nationwide ban on the app.
According to McCarthy, there is “bipartisan concern” about what is happening on TikTok, particularly what is happening to US data. “There are a lot of different implications here, so I think they could get together and let the committees work and see what comes out when it’s over,”
McCarthy said if ByteDance had sold its stake in TikTok to a US-based company, a congressional hearing would have taken a different position and that the Trump administration was correct in its initial concerns about the app.
McCarthy’s comments come after Chew spoke before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday. Members of the bipartisan panel asked Chew about their concerns about the platform, including threats to national security, data privacy, the spread of misinformation and child safety.
Due to ByteDance’s Chinese ownership of TikTok, many state governments as well as Congress recently banned the app on government-owned devices.
For a year, ties between US officials and TikTok have been tumultuous. The Biden administration recently demanded that ByteDance give up its shares in the company, fearing the social networking site could face a possible ban in the United States.
Chew’s testimony to Congress, according to Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), did nothing to ease tensions between the two sides. As CEO Shou Zi Chew testified on Thursday, Krishnamoorthi tweeted that “TikTok didn’t do themselves any favors.” The huge existing security issues I worked on were clarified by some of the answers he provided.
#Republicans #move #TikTok #ban #hearing #wayne #dupree
