Missouri Sen. Hawley announces bill to ban TikTok in U.S.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (KY3) - It it’s up to Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, cell phones in the U.S. will have one less app, TikTok. Wednesday, Senator Hawley announced he is introducing a bill to ban the popular app in the U.S. The video-sharing app is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. The app is incredibly popular with younger users and has over two billion downloads worldwide. It’s something Senator Hawley said is a major security risk.

”Here’s the problem with TikTok, it is really a major security and privacy concern for every American, especially kids,” said Hawley. “If you’ve got TikTok on your phone, it is reading your emails, it is looking at your photos, it is accessing your contact list, and it is making that information available to the Chinese Communist Party, period.”

This comes after President Biden signed Hawley’s No TikTok on Government Devices Act into law this past December, which bans TikTok on all federal government devices.

In a statement, Senator Hawley said, “TikTok poses a threat to all Americans who have the app on their devices. It opens the door for the Chinese Communist Party to access Americans’ personal information, keystrokes, and location through aggressive data harvesting. Banning it on government devices was a step in the right direction, but now is the time to ban it nationwide to protect the American people.”

According to a statement, Representative Ken Buck (CO-4) will introduce the bill in the House. A date has not yet been set.

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