(TotalConservative.com) – The White House orders U.S. federal agencies’ employees to delete TikTok from every government-issued mobile device within 30 days due to security concerns related to China, which owns the popular social media app.
Aside from Congress and the White House, more than half of U.S. states have already enacted bans on TikTok, particularly at universities, due to concerns that the Chinese government could use the app to obtain private user data or promote misinformation or favorable narratives about China. TikTok is also prohibited on U.S. military devices.
The announcement was made on Monday, and Canada announced a similar ban on the app for presenting “an unacceptable level of risk to privacy and security” according to Mona Fortier, Canadian Treasury Board President. Fortier said the app’s methods of data collection “provide considerable access to the contents of the phone” it’s installed onto.
Last week, the executive branch of the European Union, the European Commission, temporarily banned it from their employees’ devices to “protect data and increase cybersecurity” by implementing the new measure.
TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese internet tech company ByteDance, is one of the most popular apps in the United States, with more than two-thirds of teenagers using it, including many adults. Critics of the app accuse the Chinese government of using it to access user data such as location or browsing history.
China responded to the bans by claiming these policies only reveal Washington’s insecurities and called the bans an abuse of state power. A spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Mao Ning, said the U.S. government is “overstretching the concept of national security and abusing state power to suppress other countries’ companies,” claiming America must be “unsure of itself” if they are afraid of “a young person’s favorite app to such a degree.”
Brooke Oberwetter, a spokesperson for TikTok, called the bans “little more than political theater.
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