US congress advances plans for TikTok ban
The US Congress has officially voted to pass the bill to ban the social media application TikTok in the United States. The bill was passed on April 23rd and would see the platform become no longer available in the US unless TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, agree to sell the platform’s US stakes to a different company.
The bill was approved unanimously as 79 voted in favour and only 18 voted against introducing the law. It’s now expected to be signed by President Joe Biden, who, when previously asked about the bill, has shown support for it and confirmed he just needs it to land on his desk before making it official. The vote on April 23rd comes just three days after the bill cleared the House of Representatives.
Once the bill is signed by Biden, the company ByteDance will have approximately nine months to sell TikTok. If they don’t, the application will be officially banned, unavailable throughout the US market and removed from both Apple’s app store and the Google Play Store.
The reason the US wants to ban TikTok is because many officials believe it poses a national security threat, claiming it is a Chinese espionage tool. The US isn’t the only country that has reservations about how the application could be used to get information from citizens. Canada and several members of the European Union have banned government officials from having the platform on their phones. TikTok has also been banned in India as of 2021 and in Taiwan and Afghanistan in 2022.
TikTok has been persistent in disputing lawmakers’ claims that it be used to gain access to the data of American users, and the application is expected to appeal this bill. According to The Washington Post, ByteDance is expected to challenge the bill in court, claiming that the legislation infringes on American freedom of speech, something that has been incredibly controversial in the past. The social media platform has responded to the decision, telling the Financial Times, “This is the beginning, not the end of this long process.”
TikTok also previously proposed a plan that would see US users to safeguard their data as anything gathered would be stored with an American tech company. However, negotiations between the US government and ByteDance fell apart in the early stages.
The bill was included in a $95 billion foreign aid package. The deal included military assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, which TikTok spoke out against, saying, “It is unfortunate that the House of Representatives is using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance to once again jam through a ban bill that would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans, devastate 7 million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes $24 billion to the US economy, annually.”
This is a developing story; more news on the bill’s success and TikTok’s appeal will follow.
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