TikTok faces an uncertain situation destination in the United States once again.
After a surprise flurry of activity in the House this week, TikTok is the target of a new government push to separate the company from its Chinese ownership or force it out of the country.
TikTok is based in Los Angeles and Singapore, but is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance. That relationship has drawn attention among U.S. officials, who warn that the app could be exploited to advance an adversary’s interests.
What happened this week?
This week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee introduced a new bill designed to pressure ByteDance into selling TikTok.
The legislation, the Controlled Requests Act to Protect Americans from Foreign Adversaries, would make it illegal to distribute software linked to US adversaries within the country. (Ownership by an entity based in an adversary country, such as ByteDance in China, counts.)
In the bill’s language, which goes on to explicitly name TikTok, “it shall be unlawful for any entity to distribute, maintain, or update (or permit the distribution, maintenance, or update of) an application controlled by a foreign adversary.” If the bill were to become law, Apple’s App Store and Google Play would not be able to legally distribute the app in the US.
The bill, which many of its critics reasonably describe as a “ban,” would force ByteDance to sell TikTok within six months to keep the app operating here. It also empowers the president to oversee this process and ensure that the company in question “is no longer controlled by a foreign adversary.”
After learning of the bill’s sudden and rapid progress in Congress, TikTok responded with a in-app bulk message for US users on Thursday morning, complete with a button to call your representatives.
“Speak out now, before your government strips 170 million Americans of their constitutional right to free expression,” the message said. “Let Congress know what TikTok means to you and tell them to vote NO.”
Despite TikTok decision to irritate its users – or perhaps because of it – the bill to force ByteDance to sell TikTok passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee with a 50-0 vote on Thursday. Now that the fast-track bill is out of committee, it is expected to have a full vote in the House next week.
Before the vote, subcommittee members held a classified briefing with the FBI, Department of Justice and Office of the Director of National Intelligence at the behest of the Biden administration, Punchbowl News. reported.
This week, President Biden also explicitly said he would sign the bill if it reaches his desk. “If they pass it, I’ll sign it,” Biden told a group of reporters on Friday.
Why does the United States say TikTok is a threat?
To be clear, there is currently no public evidence that China has ever accessed TikTok’s data stores on Americans or otherwise compromised the app.
Still, that fact hasn’t stopped the U.S. government from highlighting the possibility that China could do it if it wanted to. The Chinese government has not been shy about getting to work with companies in the country or Keep critics in your business community at bay.
FBI Director Chris Wray once warned that users might not see “external signals” if China ever interfered with TikTok. “Something that is very sacred in our country – the difference between the private sector and the public sector – is a line that does not exist in the way the PCC operates,” Wray said at a Senate hearing last year.
TikTok has vehemently denied these allegations. “Let me say this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country,” TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said last year during a separate hearing with the House Energy and Commerce Committee. of Representatives.
Admittedly, if China wanted to get its hands on information about American users, Beijing could easily turn to data brokers that openly sell large amounts of user data around the world. with little supervision.
Because the United States has not presented any public evidence to support its serious claims, there is a huge disconnect between how politicians feel about TikTok and what most Americans feel. For many TikTok users, US repression is just another form of politicians are out of touch with young people and I don’t understand how they use the Internet. To them (and to others skeptical of the US government’s claims) the situation seems like pure political posturing between two countries with bad blood, sometimes with a bit of racism.
What happens now?
The campaign to force ByteDance to sell TikTok to an American company originated with an executive order during the Trump administration. Trump’s threats against the company culminated in a plan to force TikTok to sell its US operations to Oracle in late 2020. In the process, TikTok rejected an acquisition offer from Microsoft, but ultimately He didn’t sell to Oracle either..
That executive action failed in 2021 after Biden took office. But last year, the Biden administration picked up the cane, stepping up a pressure campaign against the app alongside Congress. Now, that campaign appears to be back on track.
The new bill, which would effectively ban TikTok in the United States if it does not separate itself from its Chinese ownership, has so far only passed a House committee vote. President Biden has expressed his support for the legislation, but the bill has yet to come to a full vote in the House.
Even if it passes the House this week, which is possible considering lawmakers are willing to vote on it so quickly, the anti-TikTok legislation still faces an unknown fate in the Senate. We may know more next week if senators begin to weigh in on creating their own version of the House bill. The Senate may not have the same desire to go after TikTok this year, which would cripple the House’s efforts or kill them outright.
There is strong bipartisan support in Congress for regulating TikTok, but things are still quite complex. The most obvious complication: TikTok is hugely popular and we’re in an election year. TikTok has 170 million users in the US and they are unlikely to watch calmly as Congress effectively bans their favorite source of entertainment and information.
“This legislation has a predetermined outcome: a complete ban on TikTok in the United States,” TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek told TechCrunch in an emailed statement.
“The government is attempting to strip 170 million Americans of their constitutional right to free speech,” Haurek said, foreshadowing the massive public outcry that could result. “This will harm millions of businesses, deny audiences to artists, and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country.”
TikTok’s cultural reach is so great that Biden is campaigning on TikTokeven as the White House calls the app a national security threat.
Even if the bill leaves the House and finds support in the Senate, the US plan to force ByteDance to sell TikTok could still fail, an outcome that may or may not result in a ban. China has previously stated that oppose a forced sale of TikTokwhich is within the rights of the Chinese government after a Update of the country’s export rules. at the end of 2020.
TikTok itself would surely also raise a strong legal challenge against the fire sale, as it did when the Trump administration attempted to achieve the same thing through executive action. TikTok also sued when Montana tried to enact his own ban at the state level, which ultimately resulted in a federal judge issuing a warrant and blocking the effort.
Beyond Congress and the courts, TikTok has a direct line to a large portion of the American electorate and a fleet of creators who have many millions of loyal followers. Those levers of power should not be underestimated in the fight ahead.