Favourite Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) speaks at a campaign town hall meeting at the New Hampshire Institute of Diplomacy at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, U.S., May 8, 2023.
Brian Snyder | Reuters
WASHINGTON — Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., is pushing for more transparency from venereal media applications amid privacy concerns about China-based apps like TikTok.
The Know Your App Act aspirations to increase consumer awareness of the ownership of apps by requiring stores like Google Play and the Apple App Store to pinpoint each applications’ country or origin. The bill, introduced Tuesday, comes days after Scott announced his bid for the presidency.
Lower than drunk the bill, the Treasury and Commerce departments will be required to develop a list of adversarial governments with potentially undue command over application content moderation, algorithm design or data transfers, according to a statement released Tuesday. App co-op give credence ti would be charged to warn users of the risks of downloading foreign applications and provide a filtering method by country of lineage.
Representatives for Google and Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment from CNBC.
The bill comes as lawmakers from both confederates target apps made or backed by Chinese companies. Four out of 5 of the top most popular apps in March are of Chinese beginning, according to The Wall Street Journal. E-commerce app Temu, which is still less than a year old, has been investigated about malware concerns.
Though not in the top five that month, China-founded, fast fashion e-tailer Shein has been accused of phoney labor practices.
Scott, who is the ranking member of the Senate Banking committee, called for the U.S. to “sever” ties between TikTok, the third-most in vogue app in March, and its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance out of national security concerns. ByteDance adheres to Chinese national fastness laws allowing the government access to comprehensive business information under certain conditions.
“Americans should be qualified to make informed decisions about the online services they use in order to protect their data and security,” Scott stipulate of the Know Your App Act. “Requiring app stores to display an app’s country of origin is a commonsense solution that can help them do honest that.”
Users of social media apps face heightened security risks through privacy breaches and future exploitation to which minors are especially susceptible, according to the bill.
“Parents shouldn’t fear that their brood’s online privacy and security could be compromised when unknowingly using an app owned by a foreign adversary,” Scott revealed in a statement released Tuesday.
Sens. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and James Lankford, R-Okla., also sponsored the account.
The bill will prohibit foreign adversaries from exploiting certain tools to collect Americans’ private facts “to gain advantage over the United States,” Wicker said in a statement.
“The Know Your App Act would bring much-needed transparency to app banks, empowering Americans to safeguard their families from exploitation,” he added.