A recent report has revealed that 33 countries have limited the use of TikTok in some capacity, including full, partial, and public sector bans on the social media platform amid national security concerns.
While the majority of the bans have been limited to government and public sector devices, private companies are reportedly blocking the app as the US considers whether to completely ban the social media platform, Axios reports.
India, Indonesia, and Afghanistan are the only countries to ban the Chinese company-owned social media app, while countries that have a partial ban include the UK, Netherlands, Poland, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden, according to the report.
However, the US is not the only country strongly considering the possibility of banning the platform. The UK and New Zealand last week announced certain measures to block TikTok from government devices, adding to tensions between China and the Western world, per Axios.
Late last month, a report was published that suggested The White House had given federal agencies just 30 days to remove the social media platform from all its phones and systems. The Biden administration has demanded that TikTok's owner ByteDance sell its ownership of the company or face the app being banned in the country.
Additionally, the FBI and Department of Justice is actively investigating the immensely popular app to see if there is reasonable cause to suggest that ByteDance, a Chinese company, used the platform to spy on American journalists.
Axios reported that TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has argued that selling off TikTok to a US company would not sufficiently address pre-existing national security concerns, adding that data privacy measures are what is needed. However, the report noted that lawmakers are still skeptical.
As a result, Chew is set to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday.
