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Senator Hawley Proposes Ban on TikTok in the United States

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican and China hawk, announced his plans to introduce a bill to ban the short video app TikTok in the United States on Tuesday.

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley
U.S. Senator Josh Hawley

Existing Ban for Federal Employees

TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, currently faces a ban for federal employees from using or downloading the app on government-owned devices.

Concerns Over Privacy and Child Safety

Hawley stated on Twitter, "TikTok is China's backdoor into Americans' lives. It threatens our children's privacy as well as their mental health. I will introduce legislation to ban it nationwide." The Senator did not specify when the bill would be introduced.

TikTok logo
TikTok logo

TikTok Responds to Ban Proposal

TikTok responded to Hawley's proposal, with a spokeswoman stating, "Senator Hawley's call for a total ban of TikTok takes a piecemeal approach to national security and a piecemeal approach to broad industry issues like data security, privacy, and online harms.

We hope he will focus on addressing those issues holistically rather than pretending that banning a single service would solve any of the problems he's concerned about or make Americans safer."

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