US Congress approves bill to ban TikTok in the United States unless ByteDance sells the platform
nme.comTikTok in the United States unless Chinese parent company ByteDance sells the platform’s US stakes.The bill – which was voted for 79 to 18 – is next expected to be signed by President Joe Biden, who has previously indicated that he will approve of the legislation once it hits his desk.
Tuesday’s vote comes three days after it cleared the House of Representatives.Should the bill be passed, ByteDance will have an estimated nine months to sell TikTok.
In the event that ByteDance does not sell the platform’s stakes in the United States, TikTok will be banned from US markets, and will be removed from Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store nationwide.The bill was first brought up last month, when the US House Foreign Affairs Committee voted 24 to 16 to give President Joe Biden the power to enforce a ban on the social media app over concerns that the app is a national security threat and a Chinese espionage tool.TikTok has consistently disputed lawmakers’ claims that the company’s ownership structure could allow the Chinese government to gain access to the data of its millions of American users.To date, over 30 American states, Canada, and the European Union have separately banned the app from use on government-owned devices over concerns it could be a security risk.
India banned the app nationwide in January 2021, while Taiwan and Afghanistan did the same in 2022.According to a report from The Washington Post, ByteDance is expected to challenge the bill in court, as the parent company argues that the legislation violates millions of its US-based users’ right to free speech – it appears at the time of writing, per The Guardian, that the UK is not planning to impose the same restrictions against TikTok on its users.The.
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