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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.

TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter told Ars that the company considers the bipartisan legislation most recently introduced "politically motivated."

"It is troubling that rather than encouraging the [Biden] Administration to conclude its national security review of TikTok, some members of Congress have decided to push for a politically motivated ban that will do nothing to advance the national security of the United States," Oberwetter told Ars.

[...] While Congress weighs the ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act, Oberwetter said that TikTok plans to keep working to persuade US officials that TikTok isn't a national security risk.

"We will continue to brief members of Congress on the plans that have been developed under the oversight of our country's top national security agencies—plans that we are well underway in implementing—to further secure our platform in the United States," Oberwetter told Ars.

Original Submission