TikTok Would be Banned From US “for Good” Under Bipartisan Bill

Freeman writes:

Lawmakers liken TikTok's widening influence in the US to "digital fentanyl":

In September, President Joe Biden announced that TikTok would remain accessible in the US once a deal could be worked out to assuage national security concerns. At that time, Biden said it would take months for his administration to weigh all the potential risks involved in inking the deal. Among detractors of the brewing deal, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Congressman Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) emerged, alleging in a Washington Post op-ed that any deal that Biden arranged with the Chinese-owned social media platform "would dangerously compromise national security."

Now, Marco and Gallagher have teamed up with Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) to introduce new bipartisan legislation in the Senate and House of Representatives, formally calling for a ban on TikTok. It's the only way, lawmakers feel, that TikTok can truly be stopped from collecting sensitive data on Americans for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and censoring content to influence elections, sow discord, or potentially even "indoctrinate" users.

[...] The bill-officially known as the ''Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence, and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party Act'' or the ''ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act"-is designed to block and prohibit all transactions by social media companies controlled or influenced by "countries of concern." The legislation specifically names TikTok and owner ByteDance as existing national security threats. But if passed, its provisions would also extend to any social media platform controlled by other US foreign adversaries, including Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela.

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.