WASHINGTON (WV News) — U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said Thursday that she would support a bill banning TikTok.
In addition to supporting the divestment of TikTok by its current Chinese owners, ByteDance, Capito said the Biden administration hasn’t done enough to tackle fentanyl precursor shipments from China.
A bill passed Wednesday by the U.S. House would require that ByteDance sell TikTok to an approved company without connections to the Chinese state within six months.
If that fails to happen, the legislation would prohibit TikTok from being on Apple’s App Store, the Google Play Store and other app distribution marketplaces.
One of the TikTok bill’s lead sponsors, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., who is a member of the House Select Committee on China, has expressed concerns that the app could be used to influence American public opinion and collect user data to spy on U.S. citizens.
Capito expressed similar concerns during her weekly press briefing on Thursday.
“I believe that TikTok [being owned] by the Chinese communist government is a danger — not just to our young people, but really to all American citizens and actually globally as well. We know they collect information, they drive artificial intelligence. They will drive logarithms through TikTok that I think are damaging — whether it’s health issues, whether its antisemitism, whatever it could be. We see this going on — they cause disruptions in our own country,” Capito said.
TikTok is a short-form video hosting service currently used by more than 150 million Americans, according to company data.
Many users are celebrities and politicians who use the app as a platform to spread their message, similar to how Twitter, now X, was used by former President Donald Trump in the lead-up to the election in 2016.
In the lead-up to this year’s election, President Joe Biden started a TikTok account last month, but has since said he would sign the ban bill if it is passed by Congress.
The danger some politicians believe TikTok poses is that because it is owned by a Chinese parent company, the Chinese government could force the company to reveal its records, which contain data about millions of Americans.
Capito said requiring that TikTok be sold to a company without connections to the Chinese government would make the app safer.
“Somebody will buy it, somebody will pick it up, and the very popular parts of TikTok will be much, much safer and much less subject to subterfuge by a state country who wants to destroy our way of life and put their way of life in globally. So, yes, I will be voting for that,” Capito said.
During her press briefing, Capito also said she thinks the Biden administration has not placed enough pressure on the Chinese government to stop shipments of fentanyl precursor products to Mexico, where the deadly drug is manufactured.
Capito said she “implored” Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to work towards a solution of the fentanyl problem.
“We see what’s happening, and we see how it’s killing people in West Virginia and across the country,” she said.
Capito said that although Biden has paid “lip service” to slowing the shipment of fentanyl precursor products to Mexico, he and his administration have been slow to implement punitive provisions “to make China stop this destructive behavior.”
“So the fact that [Biden is] coming out now and [Secretary of State Antony Blinken] is saying, ‘Other countries help us,’ to me, that’s just a political ploy because he’s getting close to election,” Capito said.