Ed Markey: “over the past several weeks, I have heard my colleagues on both sides of the aisle voice concerns about an issue I have…”

“over the past several weeks, I have heard my colleagues on both sides of the aisle voice concerns about an issue I have been raising for years--protecting children and teens from online dangers. Recently, much of that conversation has focused on the social media app TikTok. I want to be clear. TikTok poses serious and specific privacy problems. We are talking about a company that could expose American users', including young users', personal and sensitive information to the Chinese Government. The intelligence community has raised grave concerns that Beijing could potentially influence millions of American TikTok users with the platform's algorithms, spread malware to our smartphones, force the company to amass troves of data on users, and then demand that the information be handed over to the Chinese Communist Party. In other words, TikTok could collect your personal data without your consent and then target you with information that the Chinese Government wants you to see or potentially, even worse, monitor where you go and what you do. We already know that TikTok is currently on privacy probation with a Federal Trade Commission consent decree. They had to pay a $5 million fine for violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. That is my law. We should listen to those warnings, and we should do our job to legislate and regulate in response to these warnings. I am pleased to hear so much concern for the experiences of our young people online.…”