Some of the US Senate’s leading China critics have warned that even a full divestment of TikTok by its Chinese owner would not assuage their concerns about the viral video-sharing app’s data-sharing practices. 

As TikTok’s popularity has skyrocketed during the coronavirus pandemic, it has drawn intense scrutiny over its links to China. A consortium of US investors led by Sequoia and General Atlantic are in talks with the US Treasury to see if spinning out TikTok from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, would allay the US government’s national security issues with the app.

Josh Hawley, a Republican Senator from Missouri who is a China hawk, has introduced legislation to ban the app from the phones of federal employees. He told the Financial Times that while “full divestment” of TikTok by ByteDance would be a “major step forward”, there would still need to be further restrictions on the amount of data collected by the app.