Newswise — Ashley Nelson, senior professor of practice at Tulane’s A. B. Freeman School of Business, is available to speak about the current movement to ban TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned social media app, from its more than 100 million American users.

Ashley is an expert in social media, executive communication and strategy and content development. Ashley can speak to: 

-What lawmakers would need to happen to ban TikTok as a threat to national security.

-Legislation proposed by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) to ban the social media app in the interests of national security.  

-The states that have banned TikTok from government-issued devices, while congress, state lawmakers, college campuses and cities have adopted or considered rules to outlaw the app. 

Ashley believes the solution for both sides is to follow standards established by European Union (EU).

“The EU has strict controls over many different issues with regard to the internet and social media technologies. Any company with a web or social media presence in the EU cannot resell its user's data. They're heavily fined if they do so. We're talking about billions of dollars of fines over the years. Companies had five years to work in a program so that the data would no longer be shared. The EU is onto something when they're protected by saying you can't sell the data. If our government had this condition in place, no one would be selling user data,” Nelson said.