Manila City 6th District Rep. Benny Abante wanted the Philippines to follow the United States from banning video hosting platform TikTok for its alleged connections with China.
Abante filed House Bill (HB) No. 10489 to regulate TikTok and other “foreign adversary controlled applications.”
“With the rising tension between China and the Philippines, the government must take positive preemptive action to ensure that we protect our citizens from manipulation and misinformation campaigns using social media––from any foreign adversary country,” said Abante.
According to Abante, there were already 49.9 million active TikTok users in the Philippines, which was alarming as the social media platform had a connection with CPP-connected company ByteDance.
“The primary reason why I am proposing this bill is for our country to be watchful of foreign adversary countries infiltrating our communication infrastructure and making a mockery of our cybersecurity and intelligence,” he stated.
“We need to take a preemptive action to prevent the clear and present danger of foreign adversary-controlled companies operating in the Philippines with the purpose and capability of harvesting data from unsuspecting subscribers,” he added.
It can be recalled that the United States Government already launched an investigation to determine if TikTok was really connected to the CPP.
U.S. Supreme Court also said that they would ban TikTok if they didn’t sell the company to a US-owned company by January 19, 2025