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The House approved legislation on Wednesday that could force ByteDance to sell TikTok or face the social media app being banned in the United States.
The bill passed overwhelmingly by a 352-65 vote, upsetting many of the by 170 million Americans users of the service. 197 of the yes votes were Republican and 155 were Democrat. 15 of the no votes were Republican and 50 of the no votes were Democrat.
The legislation, called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, was introduced on March 5th by members of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
Reasoning behind the legislation is because TikTok is considered by some in government to be a threat to national security.
American intelligence cannot rule out that the CCP is responsible for the misinformation campaign on TikTok.
But don't just take my word for it, ask @FBI Director Wray and @ODNIgov Director Haines. pic.twitter.com/xcTDDBGVvf
— Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (@CongressmanRaja) March 12, 2024
As a result of the bill passing the House, it will now be passed on to the Senate for another vote. If it is passed by the Senate, ByteDance will have six months to divest from TikTok or face the app being banned. The Google and Apple app stores would be prohibited from supporting TikTok and other apps associated with ByteDance. President Biden has indicated that he would sign the bill into law if approved by the Senate.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, whose administration tried to remove TikTok from app stores in 2020, now says he is against the ban because, “Without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people.”
Many TikTok users and creators were very upset by the results of the House vote and posted videos expressing their anger and disappointment.
I’m voting NO on the TikTok forced sale bill.
This bill was incredibly rushed, from committee to vote in 4 days, with little explanation.
There are serious antitrust and privacy questions here, and any national security concerns should be laid out to the public prior to a vote.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 13, 2024
“This legislation has a predetermined outcome: a total ban of TikTok in the United States,” TikTok said in a statement. “The government is attempting to strip 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression. This will damage millions of businesses, deny artists an audience, and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country.”
Elon Musk, owner of the social media app X (formerly Twitter), also expressed displeasure with the attempt to ban the social media app.
“This law is not just about TikTok, it is about censorship and government control! If it were just about TikTok, it would only cite ‘foreign control’ as the issue, but it does not,” he wrote.