Tech Desk 
Dec 16, 2024
Amid developments unfolding around the TikTok ban in the US, the House warned Apple and Google to gear up to remove TikTok from their app marketplaces.
Unless ByteDance, the China-based parent company of TikTok, divest the platform by January 19, US companies are prohibited to "provide services to distribute, maintain, or update such foreign adversary controlled application (including any source code of such application) by means of a marketplace."
As reported by PC Mag, the ruling was conveyed by the US Reps John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) in a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
"TikTok has had 233 days and counting to pursue a solution that protects US national security," read a separate letter to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew by the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.
The decision was taken in line with measures crucial to defend the national security of the United States and protect TikTok’s American users from the Chinese Communist Party, wrote the letter by Reps. Moolenaar and Krishnamoorthi to the TikTok CEO, demanding the platform to immediately be divested from its Chinese parent.
Earlier this year in April, former US president Joe Biden signed a bill validating a ban on TikTok unless it divested from its Chinese owners and sold to a company not operated by a "foreign adversary."
