Washington
CNN
—
The UK banned TikTok from official authorities gadgets on Thursday, including to related restrictions imposed by allies in Canada, the European Union and the US.
The social media app isn’t extensively utilized by UK officers, based on a authorities announcement, however the measure displays considerations about TikTok’s hyperlinks to China by its guardian firm, ByteDance, and the likelihood that the Chinese language authorities might strain the businesses handy over customers’ private data.
“This can be a proportionate transfer based mostly on a selected threat with authorities gadgets,” UK Cupboard Workplace Minister Oliver Dowden informed lawmakers Thursday.
TikTok didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. The corporate has mentioned it’s voluntarily working to deal with the safety considerations by taking technical and bureaucratic measures to wall off US and EU consumer information from its world operations. It has additionally mentioned that it has not obtained any request from the Chinese language authorities for consumer data and would resist such calls.
The UK announcement comes a day after TikTok mentioned the US authorities had requested the corporate’s Chinese language homeowners promote their shares or else threat a ban.
In December, President Joe Biden signed laws prohibiting TikTok on federal authorities gadgets, becoming a member of what has turn out to be an inventory of greater than half of US states.
US lawmakers have proposed increasing the Biden administration’s authority to enact a nationwide ban on TikTok. A bipartisan group of senators this month unveiled laws that might give the Commerce Division broad latitude to evaluation and ban applied sciences linked to overseas adversaries, a proposal the White Home shortly welcomed.