US lawmakers ask Google, Apple if they plan to ban TikTok

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives issued letters to Apple and Google questioning their policies “regarding TikTok and other … apps that could pose privacy threats,” MediaPost reports. In a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, U.S. Reps. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., and Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., asked if the company was planning to remove TikTok and other harmful applications from its Play Store. Apple CEO Tim Cook received a similar letter. “Google’s failure to implement rigorous application scrutiny makes Americans vulnerable to foreign surveillance, particularly from adversarial actors like China,” they wrote in the letter.