U.S. Senators Pete Ricketts and Tom Cotton have expressed their approval of the decision by major U.S. companies to remove TikTok from their app stores. This action aligns with a bipartisan law passed by Congress, which aims to address concerns about the security and privacy risks posed by TikTok’s connections to China.
In a joint statement, the senators commended Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft for adhering to the new legislation. “We commend Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft for following the law and halting operations with ByteDance and TikTok, and we encourage other companies to do the same,” they stated. The senators emphasized that any company violating this law faces severe financial consequences.
The legislation stipulates that TikTok can only resume operations if its parent company, ByteDance, agrees to divest in a manner that severs all ties with China. “For TikTok to come back online in the future, ByteDance must agree to a sale that satisfies the law’s qualified-divestiture requirements by severing all ties between TikTok and Communist China,” they added.
Senator Ricketts has been vocal about his concerns regarding TikTok’s potential threats to national security. In 2020, he was the first governor to ban TikTok on state devices. He also supported recent legislative efforts aimed at protecting Americans from applications controlled by foreign adversaries.
Recently, Ricketts opposed an attempt by Senate Democrats to extend the timeline for compliance with the new law on the Senate floor.
