TikTok Ban Behind Fire Set at a Mall With Congressman’s Office, Police Say
A man was arrested in connection with a fire set early on Sunday in response to “recent talks” of banning the popular video app TikTok, the authorities said. The fire was at a strip mall that includes a district office of a Wisconsin congressman who has been critical of the app.
The man, 19, who was not identified, was arrested after being found near a Fond du Lac, Wis., mall that houses an office of the congressman, U.S. Representative Glenn Grothman, a Republican, the city’s police department said in a statement.
No one was injured and the mall was unoccupied when police officers and firefighters responded around 1 a.m., the police said.
The man was being held at the Fond du Lac County Jail and a charge of arson was being referred to prosecutors, according to the police.
The fire remained under investigation. The exterior of the building sustained moderate damage and the interior had minor damage, according to the Fond du Lac Fire Department. Fond du Lac, a city of more than 44,000 residents, is about 68 miles north of Milwaukee.
The man told the authorities that he had started the fire “in response to recent talks of a TikTok ban,” the police said.
Beginning on Saturday night, TikTok, the short-form video app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, was unavailable in the United States because of a new law that banned the company’s apps in the United States.
A press representative for Mr. Grothman did not immediately respond to an inquiry on Sunday about the fire. Mr. Grothman has been one of many public officials who have expressed concerns about TikTok.
He previously said in a statement that the app “creates a national security concern as the data of millions of Americans is left exposed to Communist China,” adding that the app’s parent company “has a deceptive tool to mine the sensitive personal information, including internet browsing.”
The Supreme Court said that the government’s national security concerns about the app topped free speech concerns involved in shuttering the app, which is used by roughly 170 million U.S. users a month
TikTok said on social media on Sunday that it was “in the process of restoring service” after a pledge from Mr. Trump that no one would face financial penalties for hosting TikTok while the service tries to find a way to comply with the law.
