Rubio, Gallagher proposing legislation to ban TikTok due to Chinese Communist Party ties

Two prominent congressmen this week said they were introducing legislation to ban TikTok from the United States, citing what they said was a grave security threat the app poses due to its links to the Chinese Communist Party.

Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Mike Gallagher said in the Washington Post on Friday that TikTok “offers the CCP a unique ability to monitor more than 1 billion users worldwide, including nearly two-thirds of American teenagers.” 

“We must ban this potential spyware before it is too late — not encourage its use in the United States, as President Biden is doing,” the congressmen claimed. 

The company’s parent, ByteDance, is owned and operated in China. TikTok, the congressmen said, is subject to regulations in China that require “all citizens and businesses … to assist in intelligence work, which includes sharing data.”

The politicians wrote that TikTok can monitor location and keystroke data; they further claimed that its secretive algorithm “could also be used to subtly indoctrinate American citizens.”

“This is why we’re introducing legislation which would ban TikTok and other social media companies that are effectively controlled by the CCP from operating in the United States,” they wrote.