TikTok Should Get Kicked Off Apple and Google App Stores, U.S. Senator Says

The Biden administration has been weighing a proposal to allow TikTok to continue to operate in the U.S. under the ownership of ByteDance Ltd.

(Bloomberg) — Senator Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat and member of the Intelligence Committee, asked the chief executive officers of Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google to remove TikTok, the Chinese-owned video-sharing platform, from their app stores, citing “grave” national security concerns.

“Like most social media platforms, TikTok collects vast and sophisticated data from its users, including faceprints and voiceprints,” Bennet wrote to Apple’s Tim Cook and Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai. “Unlike most social media platforms, TikTok poses a unique concern because Chinese law obligates ByteDance, its Beijing-based parent, to ‘support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work.’”