The US administration has threatened to ban TikTok from the country unless its Chinese owners divest themselves of their stake in it. The website of the newspaper informed about it The Guardian.
The US has already banned the use of TikTok on government mobile devices, but this is the first time the globally popular app for creating short videos is facing a nationwide ban in the country. The Guardian points out that a nationwide ban on TikTok would face significant legal hurdles. Biden's predecessor Donald Trump tried to ban the application already in 2020, but the ban was blocked by the courts.
Gallery
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), led by the Treasury Department, is demanding that TikTok's Chinese owners sell their stake or face a ban from the country. TikTok has more than 100 million users in the US. ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, is 60% owned by global investors, 20% by employees and 20% by its founders. CFIUS recommended that ByteDance sell TikTok during the Trump administration.
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The US accuses TikTok of spying on its users, censoring sensitive topics for the Chinese government or posing a threat to children. TikTok director Shou Zi Chew himself tried to refute all these accusations in the US Congress this week. Among other things, he said that TikTok has spent over 1,5 billion dollars (about 32,7 billion CZK) on data security, and rejected allegations of espionage. He expressed his belief that the best way to address national security concerns is to "transparently protect the data of American users and systems with robust third-party monitoring, vetting and verification."
Let us remind you that the Czech government recently banned the use of TikTok in state institutions, while canceling the TikTok account of the Office of the Government. She did so after and before the application he warned National Office for Cyber and Information Security. In the Czech Republic, TikTok is used by about 2 million users.
