Oluwanifemi Ojo
The United States under Biden’s administration has said it is working with lawmakers to prevent various Chinese social media apps from threatening national security.
This was according to what President Joe Biden’s commerce chief, Gina Raimondo said in an interview session at Bloomberg’s Washington office on Thursday.
The Commerce Secretary said, “What we’re worried about is Chinese-backed companies, being on tens of millions of American phones including members of the military, and privacy concerns, data concerns, misinformation concerns doesn’t just apply to Tiktok.”
“There’s a number of members in the US Senate who are thinking hard about what’s the right way to protect American national security.
“We will work with Congress to figure out the right way to legislate to protect America from these concerns.” she said.
This publication recalls that In a party-line vote on Wednesday, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee granted President Joe Biden the authority to ban Chinese-owned TikTok.
Meanwhile, Raimondo had said last month in an interview that “passing a law to ban a single company is not the way to deal with this issue.”
According to Bloomberg, she cited her concerns about the ban interfering with freedom of speech and its popularity with young voters.
TikTok, owned by ByteDance Ltd, is a Beijing-based company well-known in the United States, especially among teens.
According to US officials, there may be a security risk if the app is used for propaganda or by China to collect data from Americans.