MANILA - A Congressman has filed a bill seeking to ban apps like TikTok which he said were controlled by “foreign adversaries” amid ongoing tensions with China in the West Philippine Sea. 

Manila 6th District Representative Bienvenido Abante Jr filed House Bill 10489 saying there is concern that TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, may have put sensitive user data, like location information, into the hands of the Chinese government. 

Abante said the Chinese government can secretly demand data from Chinese companies and citizens for intelligence-gathering operations. 

"China could therefore use TikTok’s content recommendations to fuel misinformation,” the lawmaker said in his explanatory note.

According to Abante, his bill "will authorize the President to determine any foreign country to be adversarial or is a threat to our national security, and thereafter prohibit any foreign adversary-controlled applications from operating in the country.”

The bill includes websites, desktop applications, mobile apps, and others "which are operated, directly or indirectly (including through a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate), by a company that is controlled by a foreign adversary."

"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," Abante said in a statement.

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He added that the government must ensure that apps from foreign adversaries cannot harvest data from subscribers the country.

Last September, the National Security Council said the Philippines should “seriously consider” banning TikTok for security.

Several countries, including the United States and New Zealand, earlier banned TikTok on government-issued devices over fears that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can use the social media app for spying or propaganda. The European Commission and Canada had also banned the use of TikTok in its devices, but the social media giant has repeatedly denied accusations that it shares data to the Chinese government.

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Its parent company ByteDance, however, had admitted that its China-based employees had accessed Americans' data but rejected allegations that information was being turned over to authorities.

In January 2023, TikTok was the third most used social media app in the Philippines, according to a study from Meltwater.