The UK’s Online Safety Bill, which aims to regulate the internet, has been amended to remove a controversial but important measure.
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Days after Congress passed a bipartisan spending bill ban TikTok from government devicesLawmakers and advocates say they are looking to further regulate social media companies in the new year.
TikTok, a video sharing app owned by Chinese company ByteDance, attracts more 1 billion users every month. Lawmakers and FBI Director Christopher Wray has voiced concerns that TikTok’s ownership structure could leave US user data vulnerable, as the companies are based in China required by law to hand over user information if required by the government.
TikTok has repeatedly said its US user data is not based on China, though those assurances have not allayed concerns.
Mike Gallagher, R-Wisc., compared TikTok to “digital fentanyl” on Sunday, telling NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he thinks the ban on the app should be extended nationwide. .
“It’s very addictive and destructive,” he said. “We’re seeing troubling data on the corrosive effects of continued social media use, particularly on youth and women in the US.”
Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen said Sunday that because social media platforms like TikTok, Twitter and YouTube operate using similar algorithms, regulators should promote more transparency about how they work in the first place.
Haugen said she thinks most people don’t know how far behind the US is when it comes to social media regulations.
“It’s like we’re going back to 1965, we don’t have seat belt laws yet,” she told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Congress failed to pass many of the strongest bills targeting technology in 2022, include Antitrust Law that would require the app store developed by Apple and Google to give developers more payment options and a measure Mandatory new railings to protect children online. Congress has made more progress this year than in the past on a compromise bill on national privacy standardsbut there are still only a handful of patchwork state laws that define how to protect consumer data.
Senator Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said there is bipartisan support for many of these bills and many have made it to the Senate floor. But she says the tech lobby is so powerful that bills with “strong bipartisan support” could collapse “within 24 hours.”
Klobuchar said on Sunday that things will only change for social media companies when Americans decide they’ve had enough.
“We’re falling behind,” she told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “It’s time for 2023, let it be our solution, that we will finally pass one of these bills.”
— Lauren Feiner of CNBC contributed to this report
