WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - President Biden signed a bill into law on Wednesday that will force TikTok to divest from Chinese ownership or face a national ban, setting up the greatest threat to the popular social media app’s U.S. operations yet.
The legislation could ban TikTok in the U.S. as early as next January, although President Biden could extend the deadline by 90 days if the app’s parent company, ByteDance, has made progress on the sale.
“This is not a ban of TikTok. What it does do, it says that ByteDance, which is the Communist company that owns TikTok, would have to divest it within nine months,” said Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH), who helped lead efforts in the House to pass the legislation.
Latta said he believes the measure will compel ByteDance to sell TikTok and was a strong proponent of it because of concerns that the Chinese government could access U.S. data collected by the app.
“TikTok, the way it is right now in ByteDance can’t be trusted,” he said.
TikTok has denied sharing U.S. user data with the Chinese government and says it will not do so if asked.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the app said in part, “This unconstitutional law is a TikTok ban, and we will challenge it in court. We believe the facts and the law are clearly on our side, and we will ultimately prevail. The fact is, we have invested billions of dollars to keep U.S. data safe and our platform free from outside influence and manipulation.”
Rep. Latta said that the legislation was scrutinized by attorneys who made sure that there were no first amendment issues.
Kate Ruane with the Center for Democracy & Technology’s Free Expression Project agrees that the legislation is unconstitutional and said it will not protect Americans’ data from the Chinese government.
“If the Chinese government really wants personal data on Americans, they don’t need to build a social media platform to get it right. Now they can just buy it,” she said.
While the bill passed overwhelmingly with bipartisan support in both the House and Senate, a few lawmakers did vote against it like Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI). He said there are privacy concerns with several social media apps, and said that TikTok should not have been singled out.
“And I just want to make sure that what we’re doing makes sense, that I do protect our privacy. I think you should have restrictions on all the social media platforms that protect data,” said Rep. Pocan.
Ruane believes Congress should instead be focusing their efforts on comprehensive consumer privacy protections like the American Privacy Rights Act, which was unveiled earlier in April.
The legislation, that was introduced by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), sets national data privacy rights and protections for Americans and establishes ways to hold violators accountable.
“I hope that Congress now turns to getting that bill to the most privacy protected place that it can be, and moves that towards becoming law, because that is the only way we are going to alleviate any of the concerns that have been raised with respect to TikTok and that have led to this legislation passing and becoming law,” said Ruane.
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