Donald Trump isn’t the president of the United States but TikTok’s battles are far from over. The US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has unanimously passed a bill that would restrict federal workers from downloading Chinese social networking and video-sharing app TikTok into US government devices. The bill is sponsored by Senator Josh Hawley, who released a press statement on Wednesday confirming the development. A search through the US Senate and Congress records shows that this is not the first time a bill of this nature would scale through the committee level.

There are rising concerns in the US that TikTok is growing rapidly in its popularity, especially among teens, amidst accusations that ByteDance, the app’s owner, is connected with the Chinese government. TikTok continues to insist that it has no relationship whatsoever with Beijing.

Senator Hawley insists TikTok is an immediate security threat to the US. He is also calling out his colleagues across the partisan divide to unify to give the bill full bipartisan support as the Senate continues to address Beijing’s covert data collection campaign using apps like TikTok.

In another development, the Italian data protection regulator has asked TikTok to strengthen measures to prevent underage users from accessing the app after TikTok removed up to half a million users under age 13 within the past three months. This followed closer regulatory scrutiny of the app in the aftermath of the death of a 10-year old girl who participated in a breath-holding challenge on the platform.

The regulatory body has directed the social networking platform to cancel any accounts linked to users under 13 years within 48 hours and prevent access to underage users. TikTok has also been mandated to launch communication initiatives that would clearly specify that the app is not open to children under the age of 13.

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• TikTok agrees to settle data privacy lawsuit in the US for $92 million
• ByteDance in talks to sell its TikTok India unit: Report

(source 1, 2)

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