The Senate passed a bill on Tuesday that will force TikTok’s China-based parent company to sell the social media platform under threat of a ban. This is a controversial move by US lawmakers that is predicted to bring legal challenges and disrupt the lives of content creators who depend on the social media platform short video app for income.
The TikTok laws was part of a bigger $95 billion package providing foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel and passed by a vote of 79-18. It now goes to President Joe Biden, who has supported the TikTok proposal and said he’ll sign the package as soon as he receives it.
A choice last week by House Republicans so as to add the TikTok bill to the high-priority package helped speed its passage in Congress and got here after negotiations with the Senate that stalled an earlier version of the bill was advised. This version had given TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, six months to sell its shares within the platform. But some key lawmakers faced skepticism, fearing the window was too short for a posh deal that might be price tens of billions of dollars.
The revised laws extends the deadline, giving ByteDance nine months to sell TikTok and a possible three-month extension if a sale is underway. The bill would also ban the corporate from controlling TikTok’s secret sauce: the algorithm that feeds users videos based on their interests and has made the platform a pioneering phenomenon.
The bill’s passage is a culmination of long-standing bipartisan concerns in Washington about Chinese threats and ownership of TikTok, utilized by 170 million Americans. For years, lawmakers and administration officials have raised concerns that Chinese authorities could force ByteDance at hand over U.S. user data or influence Americans by suppressing or promoting certain content on TikTok.
“Congress is not acting to punish ByteDance, TikTok or any other individual company,” said Senate Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell. “Congress is acting to prevent foreign adversaries from conducting espionage, surveillance, and malicious operations and causing harm to vulnerable Americans, our military members, and our U.S. government personnel.”
Opponents of the bill say the Chinese government could easily obtain details about Americans through other means, including through business data brokers that trade in personal information. The foreign aid package features a provision that makes it illegal for data brokers to sell or rent “personally identifiable sensitive data” to North Korea, China, Russia, Iran or firms in those countries. But it has faced some opposition, including from the American Civil Liberties Union, which says the language is simply too broad and will sweep journalists and others who publish personal information.
Many opponents of the TikTok measure argue that the perfect method to protect U.S. consumers is to implement a comprehensive federal privacy law that targets all firms, no matter their origin. They also note that the US has provided no public evidence that TikTok shares US user information with Chinese authorities or that Chinese officials have ever tinkered with its algorithm.
“Banning TikTok would be an extraordinary step that requires extraordinary justification,” said Becca Branum, deputy director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy & Technology, which advocates for digital rights. “Extending the divestiture deadline does not justify the urgency of the threat to the public, nor does it address the fundamental constitutional flaws in the legislation.”
China has previously said it could oppose a forced sale of TikTok, and this time it has signaled its opposition. TikTok, which has long denied it’s a security threat, can also be preparing a lawsuit to dam the laws.
“Once the bill is signed, we will turn to the courts for a legal challenge,” Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head of public policy within the Americas, wrote in a memo sent to employees Saturday and obtained by The Associated Press .
“This is the beginning, not the end, of this long process,” Beckerman wrote.
The company has had some success in court challenges previously, but has never tried to forestall federal laws from taking effect.
In November, A federal judge blocked a Montana law This would ban using TikTok nationwide after the corporate and five content creators who use the platform filed a lawsuit. Three years earlier, federal courts clogged an executive order issued by then-President Donald Trump banning TikTok after the corporate sued on the grounds that the order violated free speech and due process rights.
The Trump administration then brokered a deal through which the US firms Oracle and Walmart took over a big stake in TikTok. But the sale never took place.
Trump, who’s running for president again this yr, now says he opposes the possible ban.
Since then, TikTok has been negotiating its future with the secretive Committee on Foreign Investment within the United States, a little-known government agency tasked with investigating company dealings on national security grounds.
On Sunday, Erich Andersen, a top ByteDance lawyer who has led talks with the U.S. government for years, told his team he was stepping down from his position.
“A few months ago, as I began to reflect on the stresses of the past few years and the new challenges that lie ahead, I decided it was time to pass the baton to a new leader,” Andersen wrote in a single internal memo that was obtained by the AP. He said the choice to resign was his alone and was decided months ago in a discussion with company executives.
TikTok content creators now depend on the app attempt to make their voices heard. Early Tuesday, some YouTubers gathered outside the Capitol to talk out against the bill, carrying signs that read “I am one of the 170 million Americans on TikTok.”
Tiffany Cianci, a content creator who has greater than 140,000 followers on the platform and has encouraged people to return, said she spent Monday evening picking up content creators from D.C.-area airports. Some even got here from Nevada and California. Others drove overnight from South Carolina or took a bus from upstate New York.
Cianci says she believes TikTok is currently the safest platform for users due to Project Texas, TikTok’s $1.5 billion mitigation plan to store U.S. user data on servers owned and operated by tech giant Oracle to get managed.
“If our data is not safe on TikTok,” she said. “I might ask Why the President is on TikTok.”
