The United States is looking to ban Chinese social media app TikTok — citing national security reasons.
The announcement was made by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Pompeo sat down for an interview with Laura Ingraham on her Fox show, The Ingraham Angle, where he revealed that he and President Trump are considering the decision. India had already banned the app, and Australia is considering doing so.
“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.
“With respect to Chinese apps on people’s cell phones, I can assure you the United States will get this one right too. […] But, it is something we are looking at,” adding that Americans did not want their private information “in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.”
He also claimed that India and Australia have already banned the app.
The app is already beloved by celebrities. TikTok currently has more than 1.5 billion subscribers.