A Republican congressman who has introduced legislation to ban TikTok in the US has said the sale of the Chinese-owned video-sharing app to an American company would be “one acceptable outcome”.
Republican congressman Mike Gallagher, a prominent China critic who is poised to take on an influential role when the new Congress is sworn in on Tuesday, likened ByteDance’s social media company to “digital fentanyl”. Like the opioid, the platform was “addictive and destructive”, he said, and “ultimately goes back to the Chinese Communist party”.
“TikTok is owned by ByteDance; ByteDance is effectively controlled by the CCP. So, we have to ask whether we want the CCP to control what is on the cusp of becoming the most powerful media company in America,” Gallagher told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.