Ban threat looms more than TikTok
The demand, confirmed by TikTok late Wednesday, marks the most up-to-date escalation in U.S. governmental stress on the app more than prospective safety dangers that critics have raised primarily based on its ties to China.
It comes soon after a string of proposals emerging in Congress that target TikTok to varying degrees, and soon after a thriving bid to ban TikTok on federal government devices passed final year.
The most up-to-date news also comes ahead of TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew’s scheduled testimony just before the Home Power and Commerce Committee subsequent week.
Chew stated divesting wouldn’t resolve any safety issues and that he corporation has doubled down on its ongoing plans to monitor and separately shop information from U.S. customers.
“Divestment does not resolve the issue: a transform in ownership would not impose any new restrictions on information flows or access,” Chew stated in a current interview with The Wall Street Journal.
Chew declined to comment on no matter if ByteDance, TikTok’s parent corporation, would be open to promoting the app to a U.S. corporation. Other individuals questioned how probably a divesture is.
Hannah Kelley, a study assistant in the technologies and national safety system at the Center for a New American Safety, stated she does not think that ByteDance will agree to divest from TikTok.
“This has been the sticking point in CFIUS negotiations for more than two years now—how to mitigate the identified U.S. national safety issues, specially relating to information flows and access, brief of complete divestment,” Kelley stated, referring to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a federal inter-agency panel.
We’ll have extra on the prospective impacts of a TikTok ban at TheHill.com.
