Republican Senator Rand Paul on Wednesday blocked an effort to speed up a ban on the popular Chinese social media app TikTok, which is used by more than 150 million Americans, citing concerns about free speech and unequal treatment of companies in the industry.

“I think we need to beware of those who use fear to force Americans to give up our freedoms,” Paul said from the Senate floor. “Every data collection charge made against TikTok could also be directed against domestic tech giants,” he continued.

“If Republicans want to keep losing elections for a generation, they should pass this bill to ban TikTok, a social network that is used by 150 million people, mostly young Americans,” Paul said from the Senate floor. “Do we really want to emulate Chinese bans on speech? Will we become like China? he reported.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said last week that he expects the House of Representatives to introduce a bill to limit the use of TikTok, but the timing is unclear.

The popular app collects user data on a scale comparable to apps like Instagram and Twitter. Recently, there has been increasing speculation among officials that the Chinese government may have access to this data.

Concerns for and against a ban

A small but growing number of Democrats and Republicans have raised concerns about free speech and have called legislation targeting TikTok “excessive.”

Last week, TikTok’s CEO appeared before Congress and answered tough questions about national security concerns regarding the ByteDance-owned app.

Democratic Rep. Alessandro Ocazio-Cortez spoke out in a TikTok video on Friday against the TikTok ban, calling it “unprecedented” and saying that Congress had not received secret TikTok updates. Last week, three House Democrats opposed the TikTok ban, as did free speech groups like the American Civil Liberties Union.

Many Democrats argue that Congress should enact comprehensive privacy legislation that applies to all social media sites, not just TikTok.

Senators Mark Warner, Democrat, and John Thune, Republican, proposed the RESTRICTION Act, which now has 22 co-sponsors in the Senate, to give the Commerce Department the power to impose restrictions, up to and including a ban on TikTok and other technologies that pose a threat to national security.

This applies to foreign technology from China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.

Biden wants to sell

The first time TikTok was targeted by American leadership was in 2020, when Donald Trump was still the President of the United States.

The Biden administration wants ByteDance to sell its stake so TikTok can be unhooked from China. According to the Wall Street Journal, the request was made by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).

Last December, Congress voted to ban the app from government devices, giving the Biden administration 60 days to issue circulars. But even before the federal ban, there were others at the state level.