The U.S. House of Representatives on Saturday passed a bill requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance Ltd., to divest its stake in a fast-track process to become law, tying it to a crucial aid package for the Ukraine and Israel.
A massive lobbying effort led by TikTok CEO Shou Chew failed to defeat a bipartisan coalition concerned about the app’s collection of data on more than 170 million Americans — and the possibility that the Chinese government uses it to spread propaganda.
The sweeping legislation, passed by a vote of 360 to 58, would also impose new restrictions on data brokers selling information to foreign adversaries and authorize the confiscation of Russian assets frozen to help Ukraine.
The Senate is expected to vote on the measure next week and President Joe Biden has said he will sign the bill.
“This bill protects Americans, and especially American children, from the harmful influence of Chinese propaganda on the TikTok app. This app is a spy balloon into Americans’ phones,” said bill author Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican.
Opponents of the bill, like Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, could still try to kill the TikTok measure in the Senate, but such efforts are unlikely to succeed.
ByteDance intends to exhaust all legal remedies before considering any type of divestiture if the TikTok ban becomes law, according to people familiar with the matter.
Years of scrutiny over TikTok’s ties to China span presidential administrations, political parties and branches of government. Former President Donald Trump tried to ban the app via an executive order that was reversed under Biden, whose administration oversaw a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
Several bipartisan ban bills were proposed in Congress and then forgotten. The divestment or ban framework appears to have finally threaded the needle.
The legislation passed Saturday gives ByteDance nearly a year to divest from the social media platform, 90 days of which are subject to a presidential waiver – longer than the six-month deadline provided in a version of the legislation passed by the House earlier this year.
The extended deadline means TikTok won’t have to divest or shut down before the election, much to the dismay of some lawmakers who fear China could use the app to interfere in U.S. politics.
TikTok has risen to prominence during the pandemic as a place to share short, entertaining videos without the expectation of perfection that burdens apps like Instagram. Its algorithmically curated feed tailored based on people’s interests (not who they follow) was an exciting new way to scroll through social media. This idea has since been copied by Meta and Alphabet. Youtube.
TikTok argued the legislation would violate the First Amendment and highlighted its spending of more than $1.5 billion on data privacy efforts to try to ease national security concerns. TikTok brought creators and small business owners to the U.S. Capitol to argue that they would suffer economic losses without TikTok.
They also encouraged users to call their legislators to urge them to vote against the bill. The company hired well-known lobbyists to try to influence lawmakers. So far, none of this has been enough.
