Highlights
- The House of Representatives voted 352-65 in favor of a bill seeking to ban TikTok in the U.S.
- The legislation also proposes ByteDance selling TikTok to a non-Chinese entity as an alternative to its blanket ban, citing national security concerns.
- President Biden already said he would sign the bill should it pass the vote in the Senate.
In a rare display of bipartisanship, the House of Representatives has overwhelmingly voted in favor of a bill that seeks to ban TikTok in the United States or force its sale to a non-Chinese entity. The newly advanced legislation poses another in a long list of hurdles for TikTok's stateside ambitions.
The U.S. government has been scrutinizing the popular social media app for a while now, citing national security concerns. Since 2020, numerous state and federal agencies have prohibited employees from using TikTok on government-issued devices. In May 2023, Montana passed a blanket TikTok ban, the first and so far only U.S. law to prohibit the use of the app on personal devices. That legislation is currently being challenged in court.
TikTok Is Being Sued
TikTok is facing a massive lawsuit from concerned parents, claiming the social media app has negative effects on young people.
In the meantime, the federal government has now doubled down on its attempts to ban TikTok on a national level. A March 13 session saw the lower chamber of the Congress vote 352-65 in favor of the so-called Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. The legislation in question, designated as H.R.7521, aims to prohibit all app stores from distributing TikTok in the U.S. for as long as the social media platform is owned by the Beijing-based ByteDance. The company would have 180 days to sell the app to a non-Chinese entity in the event the bill becomes law.
President Biden Prepared to Sign TikTok Ban Bill
Following this turn of events, the bill now has to pass another vote in the Senate and get signed by the President before becoming law. While the chances of the TikTok ban being approved by the upper chamber of the Congress are currently unclear, President Biden has already gone on record to state he would support the bill should it reach the Oval Office. In doing so, he dismissed the possibility of the legislation being stopped in its tracks by the so-called pocket veto. Then again, even that outcome wouldn't necessarily be the end of it, as the President's veto can still be overridden by two-thirds majority votes in both parliamentary chambers; the House of Representatives has now clearly signaled it is willing to cast such a vote.
TikTok has repeatedly denied the allegations of posing a national security risk to the United States, describing them as everything from baseless to fearmongering. Aside from asserting it has always followed all applicable laws to the letter, the Chinese social media platform also argued that its potential stateside ban is equivalent to banning the export of American culture.
While the U.S. is by far the app's largest market, accounting for over 150 million of its users, the chances of ByteDance caving in to this legislation and selling TikTok are unclear. That is assuming the bill even passes in the first place, as well as survives the inevitable legal challenge that ByteDance would certainly put forward in that scenario.
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