The congressional push calling for TikTok to move away from its parent company and connections with the Chinese Communist Party is not a free speech issue, but a "reasonable" matter because a Chinese-backed company can't control it as a media outlet, investigative author Peter Schweizer told Newsmax on Sunday.
"It's not just a question of privacy and the transference of information," Schweizer, the author of the best-seller "Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans," told Newsmax's "Sunday Agenda." "This company Bytedance is joined at the hip with the Chinese state. They do joint research on artificial intelligence with the Ministry of State Security, which is their intelligence apparatus."
Further Chinese military and propaganda officials refer to the social media app as the "Trojan Horse" it uses to manipulate young people in the West, said Schweizer.
"It's a massive problem, and all that's simply being said to ByteDance is, You need to sell," he added. "It's not as if this property is being seized. We have restrictions on Chinese ownership in other areas, [such as] the high-tech sector, the military sector. I think when it comes to media companies, we have to have the same principle."
Meanwhile, there are many concerns that someone like Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg could snap up TikTok, but Schweizer said there is "no conceivable way" the buyout would be approved, based on antitrust grounds.
"He already controls two of the largest social media apps, Instagram and Facebook," he said. "The bottom line is we have problems with all social media platforms when it comes to concerns about the effects on young people. The question is, What is easier to control and to influence and to make sure that they are being regulated in the proper way and with the proper political leadership?"
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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