US Senator urges Apple and Google to remove TikTok from app stores – News

TikTok, owned by China’s Byte Dance, should be removed from app stores run by Apple and Google because the short video app poses a national security risk, Democratic Senator Michael Bennett said in a letter.

Application, this is the United States Congress Central government devices have already been bannedCriticism is mounting over concerns that China’s government could use it to harvest data on Americans or advance Chinese interests.

“No organization subject to the dictates of the Chinese Communist Party should have the authority to collect detailed data on the American people or collect content on nearly a third of our population,” Bennett wrote in a letter to Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai. and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

“Given these risks, I urge you to immediately remove TikTok from your respective app stores,” he wrote.

Prior to Bennett’s letter, Republicans had largely led attacks on TikTok and national security concerns, although Democratic Senator Dick Turbin had already urged Americans to stop using the app.

In the House, now in Republican hands, the Foreign Relations Committee plans to vote this month on a bill that would ban the use of TikTok in the United States.

In 2020, then-US President Donald Trump tried to block new users from downloading the app and ban other transactions that would prevent the use of TikTok in the US, but the move was rejected by the courts.

For its part, the company says the Chinese government cannot access US citizens’ personal data or manipulate the app’s content.

TikTok CEO Sho Ji Siew is expected to appear before the US House Energy and Commerce Committee in March.

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