Citing national security concerns, a Democratic senator has called on Apple and Google to ban TikTok from their app stores.
The wildly popular TikTok app continues to come under pressure from U.S. lawmakers.
Many are concerned that ByteDance, the Beijing-based company behind the app, has close ties with the Chinese government, and that laws in China mean it could be required to hand over user data to the government to assist in intelligence gathering.
There are also fears that the app’s algorithms could be tweaked to push particular content designed to further Chinese interests.
In a letter shared on Thursday, Michael Bennett, a Democratic senator from Colorado, called on the CEOs of Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores at the earliest opportunity.
Also a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bennett said in the letter that no company subject to “Chinese Communist Party dictates should have the power to accumulate such extensive data on the American people or curate content to nearly a third of our population.
