On Monday’s “CNN This Morning,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) said that TikTok “used the geolocation data of minor children’s locations to then spread misinformation” about the bill to force a sale of it and this shows that they will use the app to generate U.S. political action and noted that the U.S. has forced the sale of apps before, like it did with Grindr.
Krishnamoorthi said, “Basically, what they did is they did a push notification pop-up that required people to call their representative in order to access the app. But what ended up happening is that minor children ended up flooding offices with these calls. And they called the offices and said stuff like, what is Congress? What’s a congressman? Can I have my TikTok back? One person called one legislator and impersonated his son. And so, this is exactly the reason why so many people ended up voting for the bill, because TikTok used the geolocation data of minor children’s locations to then spread misinformation about the bill. And it turned a bunch of lean yeses into hard yeses on that day.”
Host Kasie Hunt then said, “That is — it seems to really refute the argument that they’ve been trying to make is that they’re not going to use the app to generate political action inside the United States. This seems like an explicit contradiction.”
Krishnamoorthi responded, “Oh, 100%. This is exactly why people were so upset that day.”
He added, “No, it’s not a ban. It’s basically two things: One, it’s not a ban, it’s a choice. And it’s not about TikTok, it’s about ByteDance, whether ByteDance will basically sell off TikTok. This is not without precedent either. One app called Grindr, which is a popular LGBTQ app, was owned by a Chinese company. But once the U.S. government realized that the Chinese Communist Party had access to sensitive data about military and government officials, they forced the sale of that app. It sold quickly and there was no incident for the users. I expect the same thing to happen with regard to TikTok.”
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