The United States Senate passed a ban on the application TikTok in the official devices of Federal Government officials, although the norm needs the “green light” of the House of Representatives to become law.
The vote, held on Wednesday, came after several lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, considered that data collected by the popular application of short videos could reach the hands of the Chinese government.
TikTok, from the Chinese company ByteDance, has guaranteed, on several occasions, that it does not share user data with the Beijing authorities.
The norm, approved by oral vote in the upper house of the US Congress, prevents downloading the application on any device used for work purposes by employees of the federal government.
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Several North American states, such as Texas, Alabama or Tennessee, have already done the same at the state level, while others, such as Indiana, have filed lawsuits against ByteDance, for allegedly allowing Chinese spying.
In 2019, and as part of a strategy to increase pressure on China, then-President Donald Trump issued an ultimatum to TikTok to transfer operations to US companies if it did not want to be banned from the country. This ended up not happening and the company remains Chinese owned.
TikTok has more than 100 million users in the United States and, in a short time, it has become one of the most popular social networks in the world, especially among teenagers.
