Tech

Prominent Democratic Lawmakers Continue To Use China-Owned TikTok Despite National Security Concerns

Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images

James Lynch Investigative Reporter
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Many Democratic lawmakers continue to use TikTok for their campaigns despite national security concerns about the platform’s ties to China.

Democratic Congressional lawmakers such as Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rep. Adam Schiff of California are among those with official TikTok accounts that spread content to the platform’s audience.

Democratic governors, including Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Jared Polis of Colorado, also post on official TikTok accounts.

TikTok has become the dominant social media app among American teens, outpacing YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and other competitors in terms of how much time users spend on the platform per day, survey data from Feb. 7 shows. The platform is owned by ByteDance, a China-based tech firm with reported ties to the Chinese government. (RELATED: TikTok’s Security Protocols Won’t Prevent China From Spying On American Users, Analysts Warn)

ByteDance and TikTok reportedly have 300 employees with experience working in Chinese state media, and ByteDance allegedly promoted content supportive of the Chinese communist party on its now-inoperative U.S. news app, TopBuzz. Employees of ByteDance working in China have reportedly accessed U.S. user data on multiple occasions and monitored journalists who reported on the data access.

The Biden administration is negotiating a national security agreement with TikTok to address questions about the app’s recommendation algorithm and ties to China. TikTok and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) in the Treasury Department have drafted an agreement to address national security concerns without altering TikTok’s ownership structure.

Negotiations between the Biden administration and TikTok have been delayed because of persistent national security concerns from U.S. officials, according to The Wall Street Journal. As part of the negotiations, TikTok has agreed to create a U.S. data subsidiary with oversight by Oracle Corp. and a board of national security experts, Reuters first reported.