The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) is potentially a TikTok bailout bill, as it puts multiple new restrictions on U.S. platforms, but leaves the China-owned app free to steal American user data.
The JCPA, the way it is currently written, contains a loophole that gives TikTok a license to push propaganda against U.S. interests.
Moreover, the JCPA leaves out a provision suggested by national security personnel to limit TikTok’s ability to steal U.S. user data and hand it over to the Chinese Communist Party. The bill also leaves out a provision to monitor TikTok’s push of propaganda on U.S. soil, such as anti-Taiwan messages.
TikTok is already a huge problem for the United States, and is considered by many to be Chinese surveillance and psyops thinly veiled as a social media platform.
The China-owned app has a slew of American teens and kids addicted to it, and in addition to that, TikTok also poses a national security threat and is known for already having meddled in U.S. elections.
TkTok also trends certain “challenges” on its platform that teens participate in, and they are dangerous and life-threatening. In September, for example, the FDA warned parents of a deadly new TikTok challenge that involved children cooking chicken in NyQuil, “presumably to eat.”
As for the national security threat aspect, under China’s laws, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance can be forced to hand over the data the app has collected on U.S. citizens to the Chinese Communist Party.
In October, it was reported that ByteDance planned to use TikTok to monitor the physical location of specific American citizens. Last month, TikTok admitted that its employees in China can access the private data of accounts based in other countries.
TikTok is also actively meddling in U.S. elections. As Breitbart News reported last week, the propaganda arm of the Chinese Communist Party is operating accounts on China-owned TikTok that have millions of followers and push divisive videos about U.S. politicians.
While U.S. leadership has yet to act on TikTok — and instead allows the Chinese app loopholes via its JCPA bill — government agencies, such as the U.S. military and TSA, have already banned employees from having the app on their devices.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.