Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley criticized the Biden-Harris campaign for joining TikTok despite banning it from most federal devices. “Hey, by the way, we just joined TikTok,” the campaign’s post on X read on Sunday, with its first TikTok video of the president answering quizzes about the Super Bowl.
“Biden campaign bragging about using a Chinese spy app even though Biden signed a law banning it on all federal devices,” Hawley wrote on X in response.
The Biden administration set a 30-day deadline in late February 2023 for government agencies to purge the app, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, from federal devices. Several Republicans have urged Congress to entirely ban the app in the United States because of reports that it steals Americans’ data and poses a national security threat. In 2017, China began enforcing a law mandating companies to provide the government with any personal data pertinent to the regime’s national security.
READ: TikTok data stored by China, says host
“We should ban it,” Hawley previously told Sean Hannity of Fox News. “It tracks everything you do on your phone. It tracks everywhere you go, every text message you send, every email you write and all of it’s available to the Chinese Communist Party.”
The app is popular among young voters, and Biden’s campaign team will be running the president’s account. The campaign also has a presence on other social media platforms, including X, Instagram, Meta’s Threads and former President Trump’s Truth Social.
The FBI and the Federal Communications Commission have cautioned that ByteDance may potentially share user data — including browsing history, location information and biometric identifiers such as fingerprints, facial features, iris patterns, voice prints — with the Chinese Communist Party. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a government agency that reviews national security implications of foreign investments, has been investigating TikTok since 2019.
The Biden-Harris campaign said it will be posting content regularly on all platforms, including TikTok.
Nikki Haley recently criticized former President Donald Trump for not banning TikTok when he had the chance. “President Trump said he would ban TikTok, and then when President Xi asked him not to, that fell to the wayside,” she said during the town hall.
“And even if it is helpful in elections, I think that the tone at the top and the leadership of what you show matters,” she added. “If I were to go and jump on TikTok or Republicans were to jump on TikTok, that’s not showing anyone why they shouldn’t be on it.”
– Alan Goforth | Metro Voice
Image: Jernej Furman Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
