WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican Senator Josh Hawley, known for his anti-China hardliners, introduced a bill on Wednesday to ban the use of the Chinese short-form video sharing app TikTok in the United States.
TikTok has already decided to ban its use and download on devices owned by the US federal government.
“TikTok is China’s backdoor into American lives. It threatens our children’s privacy and mental health,” Hawley said on Twitter. “I will introduce a bill to ban it across the country,” he said. The timing of the presentation was not disclosed.
A TikTok spokesperson said, “Senator Hawley’s call for a total ban on TikTok takes a piecemeal approach to broader industry issues of national security, data security, privacy and online harm. There is,” he noted.
“Instead of pretending that banning one service will solve the problems we care about or protect the American people, we want to channel that energy towards tackling problems across the board,” he said. .
