US Senator Requests TikTok Be Removed from App Stores from Apple and Google

As per the news information from The New York Times, the US Senator has presented a letter to heads of major tech companies i.e., Apple and Google that demands the removal of TikTok from their app stores. Such a demand has been raised on national security grounds.

The letter sent by the member of the Senate mentions that no company has the authority to curate content for one-third of our population. In his letter, he mentioned several articles of the Chinese government that permits them to collect data and support the state intelligence work. Some articles of the Chinese government even allow intelligence agents to collect materials and files while utilizing several communication tools and facilities.

The US Senate member even cited a News report from BuzzFeed that mentions that TikTok engineers have access to U.S. data. In this news report, a recording of a Chinese engineer was cited that mentioned that “Everything is seen in China.” The letter concluded with remarks that such growing concerns should not be ignored at all. For these grave concerns, the companies should remove TikTok from their app stores as soon as possible.

TikTok has been in hard waters for a long now. Even during the tenure of Trump, several measures were taken to ban the app. However, in the past few weeks, concerns have been raised by both Republicans and Democrats. They have called out for strict actions concerning the data collection.

On the other hand, ByteDance the parent company of TikTok has submitted a plan as of August 2022. This plan includes measures that will restrict the Chinese government from fetching the data of U.S. users. it even includes the details on how the U.S. government will be given an insight into the platform. Where the Bide administration has yet to decide about it.

On the other hand, almost 27 state governments have placed full or partial bans on the app. Hopefully, a vote on this bill will take place by this month.