Washington is further clamping down on TikTok and its relationship with China in its newest proposed bill.
US Representatives Mike Gallagher and Raja Krishnamoorthi filed for a new legislation on Tuesday demanding TikTok's parent company ByteDance to divest TikTok to avoid being banned in the US.
Dubbed as Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, the bill is seeking to prevent all app stores in the US from hosting all "ByteDance-controlled applications."
According to Gallagher, "America's foremost adversary" has no business controlling dominant media in the US with TikTok as its primary tool to influence the public sphere.
New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, one of the bill's authors, even called TikTok a "Communist Chinese malware that is poisoning the minds of our next generation."
TikTok: Lawmakers' "Outright Ban" on TikTok is Against the Constitution
A representative from TikTok stated that the proposed bill is nothing more than "an outright ban on TikTok, no matter how much the authors try to disguise it."
Previous proposals to directly ban the platform have been met with failure being deemed as a violation to the First Amendment and rights to free speech.
Although Tiktok's parent company is based in China, the platform is operating in Singapore and has a separate server for to host the data for its US users.
US Lawmakers Cites Data Privacy Concerns Over TikTok's Supposed Relationship with China
The proposed bill comes in after the House Energy and Commerce Committee launched its big investigation on social media platforms in the US.
During the hearing, senators and House representatives singled TikTok and its CEO Shou Zi Chew over the platform's relationship with China.
The hearing was supposed to discuss children's online safety on the platforms rather than the connection between TikTok and the Asian country.
Many of the questions directed to TikTok have also been answered already during an earlier Senate probe where Chew reiterated that the platform is complying with the US policies.
Lawmakers have been pushing to further restrict American's access to TikTok over concerns that their data is being leaked to the Chinese government.
Even supposed leaked documents from anonymous sources within TikTok and ByteDance have not indicated that Americans' data is being accessed by the Chinese government.
