The Albanese government has ruled out banning TikTok and following the lead of the United States government, which is planning to force the platform to be sold by the Chinese company that created it.

In a surprise bipartisan push, the United States House of Representatives has passed a bill that will force ByteDance, the creator of TikTok, to sell the platform to a company that is not based in China.

TikTok has more than 170 million users in the US and 8.5 million Australian users, but lawmakers in the US are pushing for a ban because they believe the platform is gathering data and influencing Americans, and because of its links to the Chinese government.

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America flirted with a ban before, when former president Donald Trump signed an order blocking the downloading of the app, but it was never implemented.

If it passes the US Senate, the legislation would force ByteDance to divest the company or face it being banned from app stores across America.

Calls for a ban

Shadow home affairs spokesman James Paterson said TikTok gives the Chinese government “unregulated access” to Australian devices and uses that to abuse citizens’ data and influence their world views and called for the Australian government to ban the platform.

“(It) breaks the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and what has become the most dominant source of news and information in the world for young people,” Senator Paterson told Sky News.

“That’s not a national security threat we should tolerate at any time, but particularly at a time of heightened strategic competition.”

Government response

TikTok is already banned from government devices, but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Thursday the Australian government “have no plans” to follow the US in banning the platform completely.

“You’ve always got to have national security concerns, front and centre,” he said.

“You also need to acknowledge that for a whole lot of people, this provides a way of them communicating.

“In Australia, TikTok is only banned on government devices, which prevents public servants from downloading the app on their work-issued phones.”

Albanese said the government would need to carefully consider advice before taking action.

“You need to have an argument fought rather than just automatically ban things,” he said on ABC radio.

“TikTok isn’t compulsory, by the way.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has ruled out banning the platform. Photo: AAP

Hidden agenda?

TikTok has denied allowing the sharing of data with the Chinese government, but leaked audio from internal meetings showed China-based employees of ByteDance “have repeatedly accessed non-public data about US TikTok users.”

Not all US lawmakers support its banning.

“it could also be named the Facebook Protection and Enhancement Act,” Congressman Thomas Massie said.

“It’s not the American people who are going to benefit the most from this: It’s Facebook.”

Many of the data-protection practices that have put TikTok in the spotlight are also undertaken by tech companies based in America such as Meta and Microsoft.