The News
President Joe Biden supports legislation calling for TikTok’s divestment, but has not called for a ban on the app, his top science advisor reiterated at Semafor’s World Economy Summit on Thursday.
“The big issue for TikTok from a national security perspective is about the vast amount of information that the platform is able to collect about people and specifically the fact that because of its ownership there’s there’s a direct line to the People’s Republic of China, which in in the geopolitics of today is a deeply concerning issue,” said Arati Prabhakar, the White House Director of Science and Technology Policy,
She added, “The president has called for divestment. He has not called for a ban.”
The White House has previously made clear that it does not intend to ban TikTok, though the president has signaled his support for legislation that would ban it if its Chinese parent company doesn’t divest.
Prabhakar noted that privacy and data concerns were not exclusive to TikTok, and that the conversation around it was “part of a larger privacy landscape.”
“Our privacy has eroded in the information era and social media era. It’s happened gradually, but we’ve come to a place that there are some quite deep privacy concerns,” Prabhakar said.