TikTok faces an uncertain year in USAafter the Republican Partystaunch opponent of chinese regimedemanded a strict surveillance of the popular application to share videos.
Owned by the Chinese tech giant bytedance, TikTok It has become a headache for American conservativeswho allege that the application downloaded by millions of young americans can be mocked for purposes of espionage or propaganda by the Communist Party Chinese (CCP).
But now, it’s the Democratic Party the one who joined the wave of criticism against the application, so the President of the United States, Joe Biden, signed a new law last week prohibits the use of TikTok on government-provided mobile devices. The law also prohibits the use of the application in the House of Representatives and the United States Senate.
“TikTok is the equivalent of digital fentanyl,” said the Republican lawmaker Mike Gallagherone of the leading voices in Congress against China, comparing the app to the deadly opioid.
“It is highly addictive and destructive and we are seeing worrying data about the corrosive impact of constant use of social mediaparticularly in young men and women here in the United States,” he told NBC News.
“We have to ask ourselves if we want the Chinese Communist Party to control what is about to become the most powerful media company in America,” Gallagher told nbc.
A TikTok spokesperson assured that there is “zero truth” in the comments of gallagher and that The Chinese Communist Party “is not directly or indirectly in control of ByteDance or TikTok.”
The national law coincides with dozens of bans on use at the state and local level, and now TikTok USA struggles to survive as a Chinese-owned company, with the growing possibility that it may have to divest itself of bytedance to be able to continue on American smartphones.
This was the fate demanded by the former President Donald Trumpwhich ordered TikTok’s US operations to be sold to the company Oraclebefore Biden took office and took a less drastic approach.
But the contempt for TikTok worsened considerably last month, when bytedance was forced to admit that its employees improperly accessed application data to track journalists in an attempt to identify the source of media leaks.
The criticism has even spread to other Western countries. The French President, Emmanuel Macronlast month accused the Chinese social network of censor content and foster Internet addiction among young people.
The popular social network has spent months trying to reach a long term agreement with the US government through the secret Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).
The reports revealed that TikTok and the administration Biden they were about to announce a long-term agreement that would have defined strict safeguards for US user data.
Brooke Oberwetter, A TikTok spokesperson, stated: “The solution that CFIUS is considering is a comprehensive package of measures with layers of governance and independent oversight… far beyond what any other similar company is doing today.”
But this agreement has been stalled amid public criticism of the FBI Director Christopher Wraywho said he still sees TikTok like a threat to national security.
Wray warned last month that the Chinese had the ability to control application algorithmleaving American users vulnerable to a government “that does not share our values, and that has a mission that is sharply at odds with what is in the best interest of the United States.”
TikTok strongly denied that the Chinese government has any such controls.
(With information from AFP)
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