Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD: The future of TikTok, a short-form video hosting service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, is hanging in the balance in the United States as anti-China Republicans gain more power in US Congress and they want stricter regulation for the top-rated video app.
US Conservatives use TikTok
US Republicans mostly use TikTok as a political punching bag because they believe the Chinese Communist Party may be using the app, which millions of young people in the US have downloaded, for espionage or propaganda.
Democrats have also joined the chorus of outrage as US President Joe Biden signed a new rule last week banning the use of TikTok on equipment provided by the US government.
TikTok use is legally banned in the US Senate and House of Representatives.
One of the prominent critics of China in Congress and Republican member Mike Gallagher compared TikTok with a deadly narcotic, calling it “digital fentanyl”.
He told NBC News that the continuous social media use has a “corrosive effect”, particularly on young women and men in America, and is “very addicting and dangerous”.
According to Gallagher: “We have to ask if we want the CCP to control what is about to become the most powerful media organization in America.”
The allegations made by Gallagher have “zero credibility,” according to a TikTok spokesman, who also claimed that the CCP “has no direct or indirect influence of ByteDance or TikTok.”
The national law echoes dozens of state and local government use bans. TikTok USA is currently fighting for its existence as a Chinese-owned business with a rising likelihood that it will have to deny from ByteDance to continue to be available on US devices.
Before President Joe Biden arrived and adopted a less extreme stance, former President Donald Trump asked that TikTok operations in the US be sold to a US corporation, Oracle.
But last month, when ByteDance was forced to acknowledge that staff members inappropriately accessed TikTok data to track journalists and find the source of leaks to the media, sentiment toward TikTok severely worsened.
The criticism even spread to other Western nations, with French President Emmanuel Macron accusing the Chinese social network last month of restricting material and fostering young people’s addiction to the internet.
Comprehensive package
Through the secret interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, TikTok has been working for months to get a long-term agreement with the US government (CFIUS).
According to reports, TikTok and the Biden administration were about to announce a long-term agreement that would have specified stringent protections for the data of US users.
According to Brooke Oberwetter, a representative for TikTok, “The CFIUS is considering a comprehensive package of measures with layers of independent and government scrutiny… well beyond what any peer firm is doing today.”
But this arrangement has been made after the criticism by Christopher Wray, FBI Director, who said that he sees TikTok as a threat to national security.
Last month, Wray warned that the Chinese could control the algorithm of the app and will leave users in the US vulnerable to a government that doesn’t share our values.
TikTok strongly refutes the existence of such regulations by the Chinese government.
