Summary
TikTok Ban.. On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives approved a measure that, if not sold off by the Chinese corporation that controls TikTok within the next six months, may result in the app being banned.
With one member present, the House voted 352-65 in support of the bill. The Senate will now consider the bill. If Congress adopts the measure, President Joe Biden has said he would sign it into law.
What is going on with TikTok ban?
The well-known social media video app, which is owned by China-based ByteDance and has over 150 million American users, has long raised concerns among lawmakers from both political parties about potential threats to national security and the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to spy on Americans or disseminate false information in order to further its own agenda.
TikTok keeps refuting the claims. TikTok urged its US followers to push their lawmakers on Capitol Hill to vote against the proposal in front of the vote.
An email requesting comment was not immediately answered by TikTok representatives.
What are the banning rules on TikTok?
Experts predict that if the legislation is implemented and TikTok is eventually outlawed, this historic action would surely face legal challenges from proponents of free expression, the IT sector, and other parties. This is particularly true given the lack of concrete proof demonstrating Chinese government involvement or monitoring.
What will happen to politicians and TikTok next? What you should know is as follows.
What is the bill that could ban TikTok?
The Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act is the official name of the bill, which aims to ensure that ByteDance no longer has access to user data from US citizens or control over the algorithm that determines which videos US users see. It also forces ByteDance to sell TikTok to a buyer approved by US officials.
TikTok may be forced to remove its app from US app stores by the government if it doesn’t comply with the law within 180 days of it going into effect.
What’s next?
It’s unlikely that the measure will pass into law very soon. It now goes to the Senate, where its destiny is still unknown. Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer would only state that the Senate will study the measure once it reached its chambers after the House’s adoption of the legislation.
However, other members of that assembly were more excited by the House’s decision. In a joint statement, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio and Democratic Sen. Mark Warner expressed their excitement at moving the measure through the Senate.
Noting TikTok’s “enormous power to influence and divide Americans,” they express alarm about the platform’s potential danger to national security. ByteDance, on the other hand, is still “legally required to do the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party.”
Former President Donald Trump, the likely Republican opponent facing Biden in November, has said he opposes a ban, despite Biden’s vow to sign the law.
Trump said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday that, while he still believes the app poses a threat to national security, he no longer supports a ban, citing the fact that “there are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it.” This is in contrast to his earlier calls for a ban during his administration.
Then, according to Trump, banning TikTok would only strengthen Facebook’s position as a “enemy of the people.”
Who else opposes the bill?
Some security experts, free speech and digital rights organizations, and others have long resisted the concept of a ban, arguing that focusing just on TikTok won’t address the larger issues with social media in general.
Rather, they contend that politicians would be better served by enacting broad digital privacy legislation that would safeguard Americans’ private information by prohibiting social media corporations from gathering it and selling it to data brokers.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a blog post that until then, nothing will prohibit the Chinese government or anyone from just purchasing the same data, regardless of whether TikTok is sold or banned.
“Ultimately, foreign adversaries will still be able to obtain our data from social media companies unless those companies are forbidden from collecting, retaining and selling it, full stop,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation said.
The digital privacy rights organization Fight For the Future concurred.
“The data of Americans is already susceptible to bad actors, foreign and domestic, because Congress has waited so long to act,” the organization said in a statement. “Censorship is not the answer, data privacy legislation is.”
