In a rare act of bipartisanship, the US Senate approved a bill on Tuesday that sets a stark ultimatum for TikTok: divest or be banned.
The bill, passed with a landslide vote of 79 to 18, mandates that TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, sell the popular video app to a US-based company within one year or face removal from US app stores.
This decision echoes a similarly decisive vote in the House of Representatives, where the measure was approved 360 to 58 when it was tucked into a broader foreign aid package supporting Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
Altering digital landscape
President Joe Biden has expressed his intention to sign the legislation, which could alter the fabric of the digital landscape in the US as an election looms and mainly younger content producers on the platform are champing at the bit to get their message out.
If enacted, major platforms like Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store would be required to cease offering TikTok for download, under penalty of financial sanctions.
Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head of public policy for the Americas, said that the company planned to challenge the legislation in court. Beckerman cast the move as a violation of the First Amendment, which safeguards freedom of speech, asserting that the legislation infringed upon the rights of the 170 million Americans using TikTok.
“At the stage that the bill is signed, we will move to the courts for a legal challenge,” Beckerman wrote in a memo reported by the tech news website The Information.
This legislative effort is the climax of a long-standing political battle over TikTok, which has surged in popularity since its inception in 2017.
Former President and current Republican candidate Donald Trump talked about banning the platform in 2020 – when the political optics of being tough on China were favourable to him – but has done a 180-degree about-face since, for reasons known best to him, and has vocally criticised the ban.
Sensitive user data
National security and data privacy are the reasons driving the current legislative push, with lawmakers arguing that ByteDance could potentially harvest sensitive user data and censor content disagreeable to the Chinese government—a claim TikTok has continuously denied.
These apprehensions have already led to TikTok bans on numerous college campuses, in political offices and across various states. TikTok's absence in China itself and its ban in India – after dangerous user "challenges" led to fatalities – only compound the global contention surrounding the app.
As TikTok faces a potentially transformative year, an interesting debate has emerged about whether alternative approaches, such as comprehensive data privacy legislation, could address these national security concerns more effectively than a platform ban.