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The clock may be ticking for TikTok in the United States.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) introduced a bill Tuesday that would ban the popular video-based social media platform because of its links to Beijing, the lawmakers announced Tuesday.
The bill, which has bipartisan support, takes aim at TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, which is required under Chinese law to disclose its data to the Communist Party, according to a statement by Rubio’s office.
The Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party (ANTI-SOCIAL CCP) Act would block and prohibit “all transactions from any social media company in, or under the influence of, China, Russia and several other foreign countries of concern,” including Iran, North Korea and Venezuela.
“This isn’t about creative videos — this is about an app that is collecting data on tens of millions of American children and adults every day,” Rubio said. “We know it’s used to manipulate feeds and influence elections. We know it answers to the People’s Republic of China.”
Acknowledging Washington’s simmering tensions with Beijing, Gallagher called TikTok “digital fentanyl that’s addicting Americans, collecting troves of their data and censoring their news.
