Legislation that could lead to a ban of TikTok has been approved by the U.S. House with broad support.
Congressman Tim Walberg told Newsmax this week the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act would require TikTok owner ByteDance to divest the social media platform within 180 days of final approval or be removed from American app stores.
Walberg says ByteDance has ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
“It’s an issue of national security,” Walberg said. “It’s not just social media. It’s national security with the algorithms that are in place, the amount of data that they’re taking. It’s a danger to our country.”
Walberg says users of TikTok are entering personal information into the app and that information could be winding up in the hands of the Chinese government. He stressed the bill is not an outright ban.
“We worked so closely with the Constitution to make sure that we did not violate the First Amendment, that we allowed a platform to stay in place that could be useful to many people and hurtful to many people as well, but nonetheless freely used. But if TikTok chooses to stay with ByteDance, they will make their own choice.”
Previous attempts to ban TikTok have failed, partly because they were outright bans. Walberg says this is different.
The bill passed 352 to 65.
