Congress has approved a bill to ban TikTok. The bill is now awaiting President Biden’s signature. This is after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill on March 14 proposing a ban on the popular app. The bill gives the app’s owners, Bytedance, an extended deadline of nine months to sell the app’s U.S. assets. If they fail to do so, TikTok will be banned on all devices in the U.S.
The bill passed by a vote of 352-62, demonstrating immense support amongst the Democrats and Republicans. Early this year, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before Congress’s House Energy and Commerce Committee, addressing the concerns of possible data collection and combating rumors of ties with the Chinese government. However, the U.S. government remains unconvinced and continues to worry about the Chinese government spying on Americans, manipulating content, and using the app to interfere with the next election.
With over 150 million users in the United States alone, and more than 7 million small businesses relying on their social media following on TikTok to stay running, many are angered and feel their free speech is being taken away with the potential banning of TikTok. According to the Washington Post, over 224,000 jobs will be affected because of this bill.
According to AP News, Influencer Summer Lucille, a TikTok content creator with 1.4 million followers, went to Washington to share her concern, “If they ban it, I don’t know what it will do… it will be devastating.”
The concerns over TikTok’s security risk date back to 2020 when the Trump administration proposed to ban TikTok, but was later sued by TikTok, causing this executive order to be blocked.
The company ByteDance does not intend to sell TikTok to U.S. assets. With this ban, they will have an extended time of nine months to divest ownership of U.S. assets. This means we won’t see the popular app banned until at least a year from now, or longer. The bill must now pass through the Senate, with President Biden stating he will sign the bill if passed.
