US lawmakers unveil bipartisan bid to ban TikTok
The legislation would block all transactions from any social media company
Washington: Republican Senator Marco Rubio on Tuesday announced bipartisan legislation to ban popular social media app TikTok, ratcheting up pressure on owner ByteDance.
The legislation would block all transactions from any social media, Rubio's office said in a news release, adding that a companion bill in the US House of Representatives was sponsored by Republican congressman Mike Gallagher and Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi.
ByteDance did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The bill comes as scrutiny of TikTok has grown in Washington in recent weeks, after a failed bid by the Trump administration to ban the video-sharing app.
In 2020, then-President Donald Trump attempted to block new users from downloading TikTok and ban other transactions that would have effectively blocked the apps' use in the United States but lost a series of court battles over the measure.
The US government's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a powerful national security body, in 2020 ordered ByteDance to divest TikTok.
CFIUS and TikTok have been in talks for months aiming to reach a national security agreement to protect the data of TikTok's more than 100 million users.