Britain's parliament on Thursday followed the government's lead in banning TikTok, depriving lawmakers of access to the Chinese video app online.
The announcement coincides with TikTok CEO Xu Zizhou appearing before the US Congress on suspicion of ties to the government in Beijing.
"The vast majority of our users come to our platform for entertaining content, but there are people who are spreading some dangerous information and we need to take that very seriously," Xu said.
The House of Commons and the House of Lords said the app "will be banned from all organs associated with Parliament and the wider parliamentary network. Cybersecurity is a top priority for Parliament."
Lawmakers will still be able to use TikTok on their own phones, but not when connected to parliament's internet network.
TikTok CEO Xu Zizhou appears before the US Congress (Reuters)
Government ban
Last week, the United Kingdom announced a security ban for TikTok on government agencies, in line with measures taken by the European Union and the United States.
Energy Safety and Zero Emissions Minister Grant Shapps, who has more than 14,<> followers on TikTok, said he would comply with the ban on his government phone but would continue to use the app on his own devices.
Earlier, the local Scottish government announced it would also ban the app on its official organs.
ByteDance, the company that owns the app, and the Chinese government say the Western ban is motivated by political considerations.
TikTok said it had spent on a rigorous effort to secure data under the name "Project Texas," which currently employs about 1500,<> full-time employees, and contracted with Oracle to store the data of U.S. users of the app.
The app also said they use strict filtering of content that could harm children.