TikTok is “digital fentanyl”, says incoming GOP China committee chair

Washington [US], January 2 (ANI): Highlighting the negative impact of TikTok on young minds, GOP Rep Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, the incoming chairman of a new House select committee on China on Sunday (local time), termed it as “digital fentanyl” that acts like an addictive drug China’s government is providing to Americans, reported CNN.

Gallagher in an interview programme “Meet The Press” with NBC called the Chinese-owned TikTok “digital fentanyl” because “it’s highly addictive and destructive and we’re seeing troubling data about the corrosive impact of constant social media use, particularly on young men and women here in America,” and also because it “effectively goes back to the Chinese Communist Party.”

TikTok, whose parent company, ByteDance has been banned from electronic devices managed by the US House of Representatives, according to an internal notice sent to House staff.

Separately, the US government will ban TikTok from all federal devices as part of legislation included in the USD 1.7 trillion omnibus bill that President Joe Biden signed last week.

The move comes after more than a dozen states in recent weeks have implemented their own prohibitions against TikTok on government devices, reported CNN.

Gallagher said that he wants to go further. As TikTok surges in popularity, he believes it needs to be reined in.

“We have to ask whether we want the CCP to control what’s on the cusp of becoming the most powerful media company in America,” he told NBC. Gallagher supported the ban on TikTok on government devices and said the United States should “expand that ban nationally.”

TikTok has previously called efforts to ban the app from government devices “a political gesture that will do nothing to advance national security interests.” TikTok declined to comment on the House restrictions, reported CNN.

The company has been accused of censoring content that is politically sensitive to the Chinese government, including banning some accounts that posted about China’s mass detention camps in its western region of Xinjiang.

The US State Department estimates that up to 2 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities have been detained in these camps.

“What if they start censoring the news, right? What if they start tweaking the algorithm to determine what the CCP deems fit to print,” Gallagher warned, reported CNN.

US policymakers have cited TikTok as a potential national security risk, and critics have said ByteDance could be compelled by Chinese authorities to hand over TikTok data pertaining to US citizens or to act as a channel for malign influence operations.

Security experts have said that the data could allow China to identify intelligence opportunities or to seek to influence Americans through disinformation campaigns, reported CNN.

There is no evidence that that has actually occurred, though the company last month confirmed that it fired four employees who improperly accessed the TikTok user data of two journalists on the platform.

But TikTok has hundreds of millions of downloads in the United States, and the highly influential social media platform has helped countless online creators build brands and livelihoods. As its popularity soars, TikTok may have grown too big to ban, reported CNN.

Since 2020, TikTok has been negotiating with the US government on a potential deal to resolve national security concerns and allow the app to remain available to US users.

TikTok has said that the potential agreement under review covers “key concerns around corporate governance, content recommendation and moderation, and data security and access.”

The company has also taken some steps to wall off US user data, organizationally and technologically, from other parts of TikTok’s business.

But an apparent lack of progress in the talks has led some of TikTok’s critics, including in Congress and at the state level, to push for the app to be banned from government devices and potentially more broadly, reported CNN.

Gallagher said that he would be open to a sale of TikTok to an American company, but “the devil is in the details.” He continued, “I don’t think this should be a partisan issue.”

“The government can’t raise your kids, can’t protect your kids for you,” Gallagher said, “but there are certain sensible things we can do in order to create a healthier social media ecosystem.”

Gallagher, whom House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy has appointed to chair the new select committee in the new Congress, has said he believes the video app should be banned in the United States.

Incidentally, McCarthy is the apparent front-runner to become House speaker when the new session begins Tuesday, though he still does not have enough vote commitments to be elected in the floor vote, reported CNN.