Near half of American adults assist a ban on the Chinese language-owned social media app TikTok, in line with a brand new Reuters/Ipsos survey that additionally requested questions on nationwide safety considerations and China.
TikTok, owned by Chinese language tech big ByteDance and utilized by tens of tens of millions of Individuals, has confronted calls from US lawmakers for a nationwide ban over considerations about attainable Chinese language authorities affect.
Some 47 p.c of respondents to the two-day ballot, which concluded on Tuesday, stated they a minimum of considerably supported “banning the social media software, TikTok, from use in the US,” whereas 36 p.c opposed a ban and 17 p.c stated they did not know.
Fifty-eight p.c of Republicans favoured a ban, in comparison with 47 p.c of Democrats, the ballot confirmed.
The survey additionally revealed deep worries amongst Individuals about China’s international affect at a time when US-China relations have fallen to their lowest level in many years.
The web Reuters/Ipsos ballot was performed nationwide, gathering responses from 1,005 adults, together with 443 Democrats and 346 Republicans. It had a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of about 4 proportion factors in both route.
FBI Director Christopher Wray stated in March that China’s authorities may use TikTok to regulate software program on tens of millions of gadgets and drive narratives to divide Individuals, including that the app “screams” of nationwide safety considerations.
Different high US intelligence officers, together with CIA Director William Burns, even have stated TikTok poses a risk.
TikTok stated in an announcement that greater than 150 million Individuals, together with 5 million U.S. companies, actively use TikTok to earn a residing, interact within the classroom, and discover group.
“We have taken unprecedented actions to safeguard protected U.S. person knowledge, and we’ll proceed working to construct a protected, safe, and inclusive platform to make sure the optimistic expertise of our customers in each nook of the nation,” a TikTok spokesperson stated.
Efforts to present the Biden administration new powers to ban TikTok have stalled in Congress. Final month US lawmakers stated they have been contemplating modifications to deal with considerations in regards to the invoice.
Nonetheless, the problem may develop into a spotlight for Republicans within the 2024 US presidential marketing campaign, with some candidates backing a TikTok ban.
Former President Donald Trump in 2020 sought to bar new downloads of TikTok however a collection of court docket choices blocked the ban from taking impact.
Florida governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis has stated he favours some type of a nationwide ban on the app.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
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