US Congress approves bill that could ban TikTok from the country; understand

The US Congress on Tuesday approved a bill that could ban TikTok in the country or force the sale of the app, delivering a historic rebuke to Chinese ownership of the video-sharing platform after years of failed attempts to deal with it. with the app’s alleged national security risks.

The Senate approved the measure by a vote of 79 to 18 as part of a broad package offering economic aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, sending the proposal to President Joe Biden’s desk – with the House having approved it on Saturday. Biden issued a statement minutes after the Senate vote saying he plans to sign the bill on Wednesday.

Once signed, the proposal would give TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, about nine months to sell the wildly popular app or face a nationwide ban, a deadline the president could extend by 90 days if a sale is on track.

The decision by House Republicans last week to attach the TikTok bill to the high-priority package helped speed its passage in Congress and came after negotiations with the Senate, where an earlier version of the bill had stalled. That version had given ByteDance six months to divest its stakes in the platform. But it drew skepticism from some top lawmakers, worried that it was too short a timeframe for a complex deal that could be worth tens of billions of dollars.

The bill would also prevent the company from controlling TikTok’s secret sauce: the algorithm that powers users’ videos based on their interests and that has turned the platform into a trend-setting phenomenon.

The move – which has broad bipartisan support – represents the most significant threat to date to the app’s operations in the United States, where it has more than 170 million users and has become an economic and cultural powerhouse. Lawmakers pushing for the restriction cited concerns that the company’s ownership structure could allow the Chinese government to gain access to Americans’ data, claims TikTok disputes.

TikTok is expected to challenge the measure, setting up a high-stakes and potentially lengthy legal battle that will test the company’s argument that any such law would violate the free speech rights of millions of people. But their frantic efforts to derail the proposal — including telling users to file complaints with their congressional representatives and running ads touting TikTok’s data security efforts just days before the final vote — failed to dissuade lawmakers.

TikTok criticizes ‘trampling’ on freedom of expression

“It is regrettable that the House of Representatives is using the cover of major foreign and humanitarian assistance to once again pass a ban bill that would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans,” TikTok said in a statement last week.

For half a decade, U.S. lawmakers have scrutinized the relationship between TikTok and Beijing-based ByteDance over concerns that it could leave American users’ data vulnerable to Chinese government surveillance.

In response, TikTok proposed a plan called Project Texas to protect US data, which would include storing this information with American technology giant Oracle. However, as negotiations between TikTok and the federal government failed to advance, lawmakers reinvigorated legislation that grants the executive branch the power to restrict the platform.

“It’s been a long, winding road,” Senator Mark R. Warner, one of the legislation’s strongest supporters in the House, told The Washington Post on Tuesday.

“Congress is not acting to punish ByteDance, TikTok or any other individual company,” said Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell. “Congress is acting to stop foreign adversaries from conducting espionage, surveillance, malign operations, and harming vulnerable Americans, our military, and U.S. government employees.”

Opponents of the bill say the Chinese government could easily obtain information about Americans in other ways, including through commercial data brokers that traffic personal information. The foreign aid package includes a clause that makes it illegal for data brokers to sell or rent “personally identifiable sensitive data” to North Korea, China, Russia, Iran or entities in those countries. However, this provision has faced some pushback, including from the American Civil Liberties Union, which says the language is too broad and could implicate journalists and others who publish personal information.

Many opponents of TikTok’s move argue that the best way to protect U.S. consumers is to implement a comprehensive federal data privacy law that affects all companies, regardless of their origin. They also note that the US has not provided public evidence showing that TikTok shares US user information with Chinese authorities, or that Chinese authorities have tampered with its algorithm. (With international agencies).