A closely watched House vote on Wednesday passed legislation that poses the biggest threat to date to TikTok’s presence on the roughly 170 million mobile phones in the United States.
The bill in question would ban TikTok in the U.S. unless it sells its U.S. operations within six months, and passed last week in the House Energy and Commerce Committee on a bipartisan vote of 50-0. .
The bill then went to the House of Representatives, where it was voted on Wednesday and passed by a vote of 352 to 65. The bill will now go to the Senate, but its fate remains up in the air.
Many lawmakers have called TikTok, owned by China-based ByteDance, a threat to national security, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), who said in a statement after the House vote: It warns that this is the case. Communist China seeks to spy on and manipulate Americans, and this demonstrates our determination to thwart the enemy. ”
Still, 50 Democrats and 15 Republicans voted against the bill. The bill would prevent companies like Apple and Google from offering TikTok on their app stores or providing web hosting services to the social platform in the U.S. unless ByteDance sells itself within 180 days. This is something that is prohibited.
Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) surprisingly said no to the bill, citing free speech issues. CNBC.
ByteDance has denied sharing U.S. users’ data with the Chinese Communist Party and called the concerns “misinformation.”
What happens next?
The bill faces an uncertain path to passage in the Senate, with its future largely in the hands of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is determined to bring the bill to a vote. He has an ambiguous attitude about it.
Schumer has so far declined to support the bill, saying he would first speak with committee leaders, many of whom have already expressed opposition to the bill, and TikTok’s A spokesperson told the Post on Wednesday: “There’s one reason why the deliberations stalled: prohibitions.”
A TikTok spokesperson said, “The Senate considered the facts, listened to our constituents, and recognized the impact on the economy, 7 million small businesses, and the 170 million Americans who use our services. I hope you will,” he added.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was among those who vowed to block passage of the bill.
Paul said ahead of Tuesday’s House vote that Americans are “choosing to use TikTok to express themselves.” “I don’t think Congress should try to take away First Amendment rights,” he said. [170] One million Americans.” washington post report.
With Joe Biden and Donald Trump on opposing sides in the debate, Schumer will likely discuss the bill’s political impact ahead of the 2024 election and its potential impact on key Senate races. are probably considering it.
Mr. Schumer also needs to make sure he has enough votes to pass the bill before bringing it to the floor and risking an embarrassing defeat.
As such, the Senate is not expected to act as quickly as the House.
Here’s what you need to know about a possible TikTok ban
- House lawmakers passed a bill Wednesday that would force ByteDance, which is affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party, to sell TikTok within six months or face a ban on the popular social media app in the United States.
- Rep. Mike Gallagher, the Republican chairman of the House China Select Committee, told TikTok, “If we don’t break with the Chinese Communist Party, we will lose access to U.S. users.”
- The bill would give ByteDance 165 days to sell TikTok, which is used by more than 170 million Americans, or an app store could offer it or ByteDance could manage it. It is illegal to provide web hosting services to applications that do so.
- The House Energy and Commerce Committee passed a bill to protect Americans from foreign enemy regulatory applications by a 50-0 vote during markup session.
- According to the bill, U.S. TikTok fans will be able to keep scrolling through their favorite social media app as long as Beijing-based ByteDance relinquishes ownership of the app.
- Former White House adviser Steve Bannon jumped on Donald Trump for his opposition to banning TikTok. It has been suggested that his former boss’s opposition may be motivated by billionaire donors with large stakes in the Chinese-owned app. President Trump has called Facebook an “enemy of the people” and argued that banning it would give it more power.
“I tend to think that Schumer is going to sit on this for a while,” said a former Treasury official with experience with Mr. Hill, speaking on condition of anonymity. “If this bill comes up for a vote in the Senate, it will have to pass because it’s impossible to get a bill like this tough on China without enough senators.”
“For those in the coming cycle, [Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown]It’s going to be difficult for the world and other people. ”
“If Mr. Schumer brings it to the floor and if there’s a majority vote, it passes. If it’s some kind of process where you have to get 60 votes, I don’t know if I’m looking at that. If it’s President Trump. , enough people will come together to stop and say, “I like the intent of the bill, but it may be flawed.”
What happens if this bill passes the Senate?
President Biden has said he intends to sign the bill into law once it reaches his desk.
At that point, app stores like those run by Apple and Google will be subject to civil penalties if they continue to distribute TikTok.
Additionally, the app will no longer be updateable on U.S. phones, making it incompatible with and no longer functional with the latest versions of iOS and Android.
The app is already on millions of phones in the U.S., but if the bill passes, internet service providers (ISPs) will be able to block access to TikTok, according to a software-focused blog. It is said that it will become. Lifehacker effectively shuts down access to the platform regardless of whether the platform is already on the device or not.
Lifehacker pointed out that this is exactly how the Indian government decided to ban the app citing national security threats.
However, there is one potential loophole, Lifehacker points out. That means users can change their location on a virtual private network (VPN), so it could appear like they’re trying to access her TikTok from a different country.
TikTok could also challenge the ruling, as it did in Montana when it issued the first state ban banning the short-form video sharing app from residents’ devices.
In November 2023, TikTok won a reprieve in the state, which would have caused the social media site’s ban to go into effect in January.
District Judge Donald Molloy said TikTok’s lawyers had a better argument, saying the proposal “likely violates the First Amendment.” “This exceeds the authority of the state and violates the constitutional rights of users.”
Why do some lawmakers want to ban TikTok?
TikTok has been deemed a national security threat many times.
Just Monday, former President Donald Trump sounded the alarm on a Chinese-owned platform, citing the need to protect the privacy and data rights of Americans.
More than 170 million people use TikTok in the United States alone, many under the age of 30, and reports that the Chinese government is stealing app users’ data have raised concerns among lawmakers in Washington. It’s increasing.
Concerned users have cited the app’s strange requests, such as asking users to enter their iPhone password to view content, as reasons why TikTok is allegedly spying on users based in the United States. Pointed out.
