The United States Senate late on Wednesday passed a Bill to bar federal employees from using Chinese-owned, short video-sharing app TikTok on government-owned devices.
The vote is the latest action on the part of US lawmakers to crack down on Chinese companies amid national security fears that Beijing could use them to spy on Americans.
The Senate action comes after North Dakota and Iowa this week joined a growing number of US states in banning TikTok, owned by ByteDance, from state-owned devices amid concerns that data could be passed on to the Chinese government.
Many federal agencies, including the Defence, Homeland Security and State departments, already ban TikTok from government-owned devices.
“TikTok is a major security risk to the United States, and it has no place on government devices,” Senator Josh Hawley, who wrote the Bill, said previously.
TikTok has said the concerns are largely fuelled by misinformation and it is happy to meet policymakers to discuss the company’s practices.
“We’re disappointed that so many states are jumping on the political bandwagon to enact policies based on unfounded falsehoods about TikTok that will do nothing to advance the national security of the United States,” the company said on Wednesday.
Other states taking similar actions include Texas, Maryland and South Dakota.
This comes as researchers said on Wednesday that TikTok appears to be pushing videos about eating disorders and self-harm to 13-year-old users at a rapid clip.
TikTok tailors a stream of short videos to people based on their interests, view times and the accounts they follow. (StraitsTimes)
