‘TikTok ban’ gets signed into law — here’s what happens next
On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate passed an extensive, $95 billion national security package that sends financial aid to Taiwan, Ukraine, Israel, and Gaza. Tucked inside that bill is a piece of legislation the government’s been trying to pass for a while — a purported “TikTok ban.” Called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controller Applications Act, the bill won’t exactly ban TikTok; instead, the goal is to force TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the popular app. The legislation signed by President Joe Biden on Wednesday will give ByteDance nine months to sell TikTok. (Biden could extend the deadline by 90 days, too.)
Why was the TikTok legislation pushed under a national security bill? Lawmakers’ argument is that ByteDance has or could share TikTok user data with the Chinese government. The concern is over a Chinese law that requires Chinese companies to share user data with the country if there’s a risk to the country’s national security, despite little (but not zero) evidence that TikTok has done so. Currently, TikTok has more than 170 million American users, making it one of the most popular apps in the country.
The Senate approved the bipartisan foreign aid package in a 79-18 vote. This latest push to force ByteDance’s divestiture comes just one month after the U.S. House of Representatives passed its own TikTok bill. A separate bill, the RESTRICT Act, was proposed last year in a move to ban or restrict TikTok, but it never gained enough support to move past a congressional hearing.
TikTok intends to fight the bill by filing a legal challenge, according to a report from The Information. The company has waged its own lobbying campaign over the past few months, warning its users that their freedom of speech was at risk should the bill pass. In March, TikTok sent push notifications to its U.S.-based users asking them to contact their representatives to prevent the “total ban of TikTok.” Thousands of TikTok users contacted House lawmakers, but those efforts —
Read more on polygon.com
