Does anyone besides the Biden admin think China is in any way worried or concerned over this? Or that China will even pay attention to Biden’s ramblings?
Biden administration threatens to ban TikTok if Chinese parent company doesn’t sell stakes
The Biden administration has demanded the Chinese owners of TikTok sell their stakes in the social media app or risk a possible ban in the U.S., the company told The Hill on Wednesday.
The Wall Street Journal first reported that the U.S. Treasury-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) made the push. TikTok confirmed it had heard from CFIUS and said it did not dispute the reporting.
The CFIUS demand comes amid security concerns about the video-sharing app, which is owned by China-based parent company ByteDance — specifically, that the Chinese government could gain access to American user data.
Congress has been increasingly scrutinizing TikTok and talking about a potential ban — and Republicans have knocked the Biden administration for not taking action on the perceived threat.
Even if the Chinese government sold their stake, it wouldn’t make a difference, because the data would still be fed to them. What should be happening, to start, is that all federal employees should be banned from having TikTok on their government issued phones, tablets, and computers. The backend software should restrict the access of TikTok, in the same way it blocks other websites. The same as private corporations block lots of websites.
From there, a ban on it in total could be debated. Because it is free choice for private citizens if they want to expose their own data to China.
