After India banned the US, Apple and Google are now forcing TikTok to kick out of app stores

WASHINGTON: TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, should be removed from app stores owned by Apple Inc and Alphabet’s Google because its short video social media app poses a risk to national security, said Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat on the Intelligence Committee , in a letter dated Thursday.

The app, which Congress has already banned on federal government devices, has drawn increasing criticism over concerns that the Chinese government could use it to collect data on Americans or advance Chinese interests.

“No company subject to CCP (Chinese Communist Party) regulations should have the power to collect such extensive data on the American people or curate content for nearly a third of our population,” Bennet wrote in the letter to Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai and Apple CEO Tim Kok.

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

Prior to Bennet’s letter, Republicans were largely in charge of TikTok and national security concerns, though Democratic Senator Dick Durbin previously urged Americans to stop using the app.

In the House, now in Republican hands, the foreign affairs committee plans to vote this month on a bill to block the use of TikTok in the United States, the committee confirmed.

In 2020, then-President Donald Trump tried to stop new users from downloading TikTok and ban other transactions that would have effectively prevented the use of TikTok in the United States, but the move was rejected by the courts.

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

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will appear before the US House Energy and Commerce Committee in March.

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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and was published from a syndicated news agency feed)