DStv Channel 403 Tuesday, 15 October 2024

More political storms for TikTok after US government ban

TikTok has become a political punching bag for US conservatives who allege that the app can be circumvented for spying or propaganda by the Chinese Communist Party

SAN FRANCISCO - TikTok faces an uncertain year ahead in the United States as anti-China Republicans take greater control in Congress demanding tighter scrutiny for the highly popular video-sharing app.

Owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, TikTok has become a political punching bag for US conservatives who allege that the app downloaded by millions of US young people can be circumvented for spying or propaganda by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

But now Democrats have joined the groundswell of criticism and US President Joe Biden last week signed a new law that bans the use of TikTok on government-issued devices. The law also bans TikTok use in the US House of Representatives and Senate.

TikTok is the equivalent of "digital fentanyl," said Republican lawmaker Mike Gallagher, one of the leading voices in Congress against China, comparing the app to the deadly opioid.

READ: Five ways TikTok is seen as threat to US national security

"It's highly addictive and destructive and we're seeing troubling data about the corrosive impact of constant social media use, particularly on young men and women here in America," he told NBC News.

"We have to ask whether we want the CCP to control what's on the cusp of becoming the most powerful media company in America," Gallagher told NBC.

A TikTok spokesperson said that there is "zero truth" to Gallagher's comments and that the CCP "has neither direct nor indirect control of ByteDance or TikTok." 

The national law matches dozens of government-use bans at the state and local level and now TikTok USA is fighting to survive as a Chinese-owned company, with the growing chance that it will have to divest from ByteDance in order to remain on US smartphones.

READ: UK parliament drops TikTok account over China concerns

This was the fate demanded by former president Donald Trump who ordered that TikTok operations in the United States be sold to US company Oracle before Biden entered office and took a less drastic approach.

But the mood towards TikTok soured considerably last month when ByteDance was forced to admit that employees improperly accessed TikTok data to track journalists in an effort to identify the source of leaks to the media.

Criticism has even expanded to other Western countries with French President Emmanuel Macron last month accusing the Chinese social network of censoring content and encouraging online addiction among young people.

TikTok staunchly denies that the Chinese government has such controls.

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