Lawmakers are trying to ban TikTok. But the app is hardly the only offender

When lawmakers grilled TikTok CEO Shou Chew during a lengthy hearing last March, Rep. Darren Soto argued what has now become the crux of a bill that overwhelmingly passed in the House this week.

When lawmakers grilled TikTok CEO Shou Chew during a lengthy hearing last March, Rep. Darren Soto argued what has now become the crux of a bill that overwhelmingly passed in the House this week. “TikTok needs to be an American company with American values,” Soto, a Democrat from Florida, told the TikTok chief executive. Chew, meanwhile, clapped back, “American social companies don’t have a good track record with data privacy and user security. I mean, look at Facebook and Cambridge Analytica.” Roughly one year later, House lawmakers on Wednesday overwhelmingly voted to pass a bill that would effectively ban TikTok in the United States or force its sale, citing national security concerns due to the social media platform’s parent company, ByteDance, being based in Beijing. Proponents of the bill argue that TikTok, which boasts 170 million American users, poses a national security threat because China’s intelligence laws could force ByteDance to hand over US user data to the Chinese Communist Party. The move to ban TikTok might win political points with some China-hawk voters in an election year. But if lawmakers were serious about protecting the digital data of millions of American social media users, targeting TikTok alone is a limited way to achieve this goal. “Whether it’s dressed up as a ban or a forced sale, targeting TikTok is shortsighted and dangerous when what we really need is strong privacy legislation to protect our data from all Big Tech companies, not just one,” Evan Greer, the director of the digital rights advocacy group Fight for the Future, told CNN.