HORRY COUNTY, S.C. (WBTW) — South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson on Monday added his name to a brief asking the U.S. Court of Appeals to uphold legislation that would ban TikTok.
“TikTok is a tool of the Chinese Communist Party, an enemy of the United States, so its operations in the U.S. pose a serious threat to our national security. The First Amendment does not protect a platform that allows the CCP to exploit Americans’ data and undermine our freedoms,” Wilson said in a statement announcing his decision to join 20 other attorneys general pushing to outlaw the social media platform.
According to the brief, TikTok is the second most downloaded mobile app globally, with about 654 million users. Its largest audience of 150 million is the United States.
“TikTok aggressively acquires the personal data of its users. Like other social media sties, TikTok learns users’ preferences and uses that information to serve targeted content,” the brief says.
Its parent company ByteDance is based in China.