MANILA PHILIPPINES – Manila Representative Bienvenido Abante wants Tiktok to be ban and other foreign adversary-controlled applications that are controlled by foreign countries.
Under House Bill 10489 filed by Abante, one of the things that can be banned is TikTok, which has 49.9 million active users in the Philippines. The TikTok app is connected allegedly to ByteDance which is linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
He considered this as a possible threat to National security and territorial integrity.
“With the rising tension between China and the Philippines, the government must take positive preemptive action to ensure that we protect our citizens from manipulation and misinformation campaigns using social media––from any foreign adversary country,” Abante said.
Under the proposed bill, the President will identify the countries that the Philippines may not agree with.
According to the lawmaker, TikTok collects data from its users and subscribers that can easily be sent to the Chinese government.
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“With the rising tension between China and the Philippines, the government must take positive preemptive action to ensure that we protect our citizens from manipulation and misinformation campaigns using social media––from any foreign adversary country,” he said in a statement.
Several countries he said have already enacted laws to regulate and ban Tiktok in their territories, including India.
Some other countries that have banned tiktok include Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, the European Union, France, Indonesia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nepal, Norway, Pakistan, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the United States.