On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Ingraham Angle,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) called for a ban on TikTok and argued that one reason the app should be banned is that the application exposes minors to “stuff that they would never let Chinese teenagers see,” in addition to the privacy risks and the country’s ability to be used by the Chinese Communist Party to influence Americans.
Cotton said TikTok “shouldn’t be present in the United States, Laura. There [are] a lot of things that you just pointed out there that are bad about TikTok, the way they expose minors to violent, depraved, degrading sexual material or young girls to videos about body image issues, stuff that they would never let Chinese teenagers see, or the risk to your data security and your privacy. But if you take a step back and look at the bigger picture, why in the world would we allow a Chinese-owned company, which has to answer to the Chinese Communists, to be one of the largest media platforms in our country? Would we ever have allowed Soviet Russia to own a major newspaper or a major broadcast network during the Cold War? Of course we wouldn’t have. And it’s very disappointing that the Biden administration is sending signals that they might tolerate TikTok’s presence here in the United States despite the grave threat it poses to all Americans.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett