Legislation banning TikTok completely should be the next step in addressing security concerns about the social media app, a US commissioner says.
A federal parliamentary inquiry is examining the risks posed to Australian democracy by foreign interference through online platforms such as TikTok.
While the federal government has banned TikTok on government devices in line with other nations, experts have urged Western countries to go even further.
Brendan Carr, a commissioner at the US Federal Communications Commission, said a complete ban of the app was necessary.
"Some sort of rifle-shot legislation that imposes a ban or a genuine divestiture is the way forward right now with a ban on TikTok for federal devices," he told the inquiry.
"The other (option) would be a genuine divestiture, elimination of all corporate ties back to China. A genuine effort like that is one that I'm open to as well."
Concerns have been raised about TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance and its ties to the Chinese government, as well as how data is used.
TikTok denies it is harvesting sensitive data or is a national security risk.
Mr Carr, a senior Republican, said there was a "deep entanglement" between employees for ByteDance and the Chinese Communist Party.
"The argument that somehow TikTok is going to stand up to the CCP is belied by their inability to do it at any time publicly," he said.
The USFCC has advocated for a total ban on TikTok in the US.
Government bans have been issued in 30 US states, with Montana the first state to ban the app altogether.
Australian Strategic Policy Institute senior analyst Fergus Ryan said TikTok should be forced to regularly investigate and disclose operations carried out on the platform by state actors, similar to work conducted by other social media companies.
Mr Ryan said while regulations would be a step forward, it may not be enough.
"A complete overhaul of regulation around data will still not address the risk that the CCP could leverage its overwhelming influence over TikTok ... in order to manipulate Australia's political discourse in such a way that would be unlikely to be detected," he said.
"While industry-wide legislation is needed to deal with all apps, there also needs to be bespoke legislation that deals with TikTok and any other emerging major social media apps from authoritarian countries."
Calls have also been made to ban messaging app WeChat because of national security fears.
Mr Ryan said if a ban was on the table for WeChat because of the app's practices and government ties, Chinese-Australians would be impacted by such a move, due to the large number who use the platform.
"If any platform is not living up to the standards that we expect these social media platforms to have, then ultimately there needs to be a consequence to that," he said.
"Unfortunately that has a huge cost on Chinese-Australian people, and that is very, very unfortunate.
"But the blame for that shouldn't lie with the Australian government, it ultimately goes back to the Chinese Communist Party."
The inquiry's chair, Liberal senator James Paterson, said security concerns surrounding TikTok had to be taken seriously.
"We are also very concerned about the way in which the platform could be used and might have been used in the past to pump disinformation into our political system," he told reporters.
