Apparently, the US government is considering banning TikTok and other Chinese social apps

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TikTok, the app everyone loves or loves to hate, is apparently being looked at by the US government, according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a statement to Fox News. TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, has been in the news for a while now, most recently coming under fire for how it accessed the iPhone’s clipboard.

Pompeo tells Fox News that the US government is looking at various Chinese companies, including social platforms like TikTok. Their claims are that China is using these companies to surveil and propagandize US citizens.

“We are taking this very seriously and we are certainly looking at it. We have worked on this very issue for a long time, whether its the problem of having Huawei technology in your infrastructure — we’ve gone all over the world and we are making real progress getting that out — we had declared ZTE a danger to American national security,” said Pompeo.

READ MORE: FCC commissioner urges Apple and Google to ban TikTok

To go alongside this news, the US recently classified Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE  as “national security threats.”

Long story short, the US government is concerned that these Chinese companies are taking the mass amounts of data it collects and stores and funneling it straight to the Chinese government. Of course, these companies have come out to state that it is not happening, with TikTok noting that it stores US user data in the United States, with backups in Singapore, and that the data and data centers are not subject to Chinese law.

What do you think? Do you agree with the potential TikTok ban? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

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• Facebook finally wakes up, will start flagging politicians’ posts that violate its policies

Josiah Motley

Former KnowTechie editor.