The president’s reelection effort posted its first video to TikTok on Sunday, showing Biden answering Super Bowl-themed questions ahead of the game between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers.
Several Republican senators slammed Biden’s decision to join TikTok, given data privacy and national security concerns about the social media platform and its Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance.
“TikTok is a spy app for the Chinese Communist Party,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) claimed in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
“It’s used to push propaganda on American kids and steal data. It’s shameful that Biden is embracing TikTok to compensate for bad polls driven by his mental decline.”
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) pointed to legislation that Biden signed in December 2022, banning TikTok from federal government devices, in criticizing the campaign’s decision to use the social media platform.
“TikTok was banned from all federal government devices because it’s a threat to our national security,” Ernst wrote on X. “That didn’t stop the Biden campaign from joining the CCP’s dangerous propaganda app.”
The campaign’s joining of TikTok has also rankled Democratic Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), who voiced concerns about the national security implications of the decision on Monday.
“I think at the end of the day, the Chinese Communist Party can not only get access to the data, but also, more importantly, can potentially drive the algorithms in terms of what you’re seeing,” Warner said, adding, “I’m a little worried about a mixed message.”
Warner, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, introduced bipartisan legislation alongside Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) last year that would give the Department of Commerce the ability to review and potentially ban technologies associated with foreign governments, such as TikTok.
Read more in a full report at TheHill.com.
