Some members of Congress are advocating for legislation that would ban the popular social media platform TikTok in the U.S. Those in favor of the ban argue that the social media site is dangerous to American security given that the app is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, which, many argue, could be controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. Continued use of the app, they say, could put Americans’ data at risk. In the omnibus spending bill that passed in December, Congress included language banning TikTok’s use on government-issued phones and devices, following the lead of several states that enacted…

The Trump administration moved to protect Americans’ data privacy in September when it banned Chinese-developed social media apps TikTok and WeChat from U.S. app stores, sparking a debate over national security and free speech. The U.S. Commerce Department’s order barred all new U.S. downloads of the apps after Sept. 20 and would ban the apps’ functionality beginning on Nov. 12. Ahead of the September announcement, President Donald Trump had argued for weeks that the apps were allowing the Chinese Communist Party to surveil Americans. “The spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in the…