TikTok recently unveiled new efforts to limit users’ exposure to the app, including an hour-per-day time limit for children under 18, but it fails to address lawmaker’s concerns. It’s not just espionage that worries lawmakers, who argue the app has a vulnerable captive audience among young people in the US. “I don't think we want to have a Chinese-owned company to have that kind of access to not just our kids, our culture.” I'm not sure it's going to get us everywhere we want to be,” says senator John Hickenlooper, a Colorado Democrat. “I think it's absolutely a good first step. While many lawmakers embraced White House pressure, they aren’t sitting on the sidelines as they did when former president Donald Trump tried to ban TikTok through executive orders, which the courts ultimately shot down. “It’s a step toward banning them,” says senator Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican. Lawmakers in both parties welcomed that announcement. The White House supports Warner’s bill, and the multi-agency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States told TikTok it would be banned unless it’s completely divested from ByteDance. And FBI director Christopher Wray warned lawmakers that misinformation spread through the app can “divide Americans.” At the start of the month, Senate intelligence chair Mark Warner unveiled a new measure, the Restrict Act, which would enable the US commerce secretary to ban TikTok and any other tech from six “hostile” nations that the US intelligence community deems a national security threat. Last week, the UK joined the US, Canada, and Belgium in banning TikTok on government devices. “It’s all about what they do, and what they do is pretty alarming.” “I don’t think there’s anything they can say,” says senator Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat. It’s not just House Republicans calling for TikTok’s expulsion from the US-especially amid reports that ByteDance staffers used data collected by the app to spy on tech reporters-with Democrats joining the fray. The good news for TikTok is that Bennet didn’t call to “blow up” the app, as Flordia Republican congressman Matt Gaetz did. “But I remain fundamentally concerned that TikTok, as a Chinese-owned company, is subject to dictates from the Chinese Communist Party and poses an unacceptable risk to US national security.” Chew and I had a frank conversation, and I appreciate his time,” said senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat from Colorado, in a statement after their meeting last month. Nor have Chew’s private meetings with Washington lawmakers dissuaded them from pursuing a nationwide TikTok ban. But the more than $10 million it spent over the past two years has done little to change lawmakers’ attitudes about the app. ![]() It did this by nearly doubling its lobbying budget from 2020 to 2021, when Chew took TikTok's reins. It now employs at least 40 lobbyists, including at least four former members of Congress two from each party and chamber of Congress-a bipartisan, bicameral blitz. TikTok’s parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, ramped up its Washington lobbying efforts in recent years. While this week will be Chew’s first time sitting under the hot lights of a congressional committee room, he’s no stranger to Washington. ![]() “It’s gotten a lot more attention, so there’s just more awareness of the problem,” says Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, the top Democrat on the new House Select Committee on China. Most lawmakers are now convinced TikTok is a backdoor for the Chinese Communist Party, which has proponents of a full US ban feeling bullish. That was bad news for the company even before China infuriated Congress with its globetrotting spy balloon. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.Īfter banning the app on all federal government devices last year, anti-TikTok lawmakers-a group that’s seemingly expanding by the day-say momentum is firmly on their side. It's a tall order-indeed, it may be an impossible one. This is part of his attempt to convince lawmakers that TikTok is integrally woven into the hearts and minds of tens of millions of Americans and poses no national security risk. And it will be unavoidable Thursday morning when he testifies before a bipartisan panel of elected antagonists on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.Ĭhew is slated to unveil new data during the hearing showing that the app has been downloaded by more than 150 million Americans and used by 5 million US businesses. That disconnect has consumed the narrative around the app since CEO Shou Zi Chew took the helm of TikTok roughly two years ago. TikTok is the hottest app on the planet-and the most-hated tech in Washington, DC.
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