Nearly half of adults in the US support a ban on Chinese-owned social media app TikTok, a new Reuters/Ipsos survey showed, as New York City on Wednesday banned TikTok on government-owned devices, citing security concerns.
TikTok, owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動) and used by tens of millions of Americans, has faced calls from US lawmakers for a nationwide ban over concerns about possible Chinese government influence.
Forty-seven percent of respondents to the two-day poll, which concluded on Tuesday, said they at least somewhat supported “banning the social media application, TikTok, from use in the United States,” while 36 percent opposed a ban and 17 percent said they did not know.
Photo: Reuters
Fifty-eight percent of Republicans favored a ban, compared with 47 percent of Democrats, the poll showed.
The survey also revealed deep worries among Americans about China’s global influence.
The online poll was conducted nationwide, collecting responses from 1,005 adults. It had a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of about 4 percentage points.
FBI Director Christopher Wray in March said that China’s government could use TikTok to control software on millions of devices and drive narratives to divide Americans, adding that the app “screams” of national security concerns.
TikTok said in a statement that more than 150 million Americans, including 5 million US businesses, use TikTok to earn a living, engage in the classroom and find communities.
“We’ve taken unprecedented actions to safeguard protected US user data, and we will continue working to build a safe, secure, and inclusive platform to ensure the positive experience of our users in every corner of the country,” a TikTok spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, the administration of New York City Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement that TikTok “posed a security threat to the city’s technical networks.”
New York City agencies are required to remove the app within 30 days, and employees would lose access to the app and its Web site on city-owned devices and networks.
New York State had already banned TikTok on state-issued mobile devices.
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