Washington. The United States Senate approved this Wednesday by consensus (that is, without a vote in between) to prohibit the application TikTok on the official devices of federal government employees, although the rule must be approved in the House of Representatives to become law.
The decision comes after several lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, have suggested that data collected by the popular short video app may find its way into the hands of the Chinese government.
TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has assured on several occasions that it does not share user data with the authorities of the Asian country.
The rule approved today by the Upper House would prevent the download of the application on any device used for work purposes by federal government officials.
Several states, such as Texas, Alabama or Tennessee, have already done the same at the state level, while territories such as Indiana have filed lawsuits against ByteDance for allegedly allowing Chinese espionage.
In 2019, and as part of his strategy to increase pressure on China, the then president of the United States, Donald Trump, gave an ultimatum to TikTok so that it would transfer its operations to American companies if it did not want to be banned in the country, something that, however, did not end up happening, and to this day the application remains Chinese property.
TikTok has more than 100 million users in the United States and has become one of the most popular social networks in the world in a short time, especially among teenagers.
