On Tuesday, the Senate passed a massive foreign aid plan including an ultimatum for TikTok: Divest or be barred from operating in the United States. The package was approved by the House of Representatives on Saturdayand President Joe Biden said he intended to sign the bill on Wednesday.
“Even though our social media platforms have fumbled in their response to foreign influence operations, there has never been a concern that these platforms are operating under the direction of foreign adversaries,” said Mark Warner, president of the Senate Intelligence Committee, before the vote. Tuesday. “I can’t say the same about TikTok.”
For more than four years, Congress threatened to ban TikTok, citing potential risks to national security. Last month, the House approved a separate divestment bill, but the measure stalled in the Senate after lawmakers like Sen. Maria Cantwell argued that giving TikTok six months to find a new owner was too little of time. The new bill extends the deadline by up to six more months, giving TikTok a year to sell.
“It is regrettable that the House of Representatives is using the guise of significant foreign aid and humanitarian assistance to once again pass a ban bill that would trample on the free speech rights of 170 million Americans,” TikTok said in a statement shortly after Saturday’s vote. . The company did not immediately respond to the Senate vote Tuesday.
Efforts to ban TikTok have become politically difficult, especially as more and more politicians are joining the platform to campaign in the 2024 elections. For years, the Biden administration and campaign avoided creating their own accounts on the app, choose to create a network of influencers to fill the void. But in February, Biden’s re-election the campaign joined TikTok. In March, Biden told reporters that he would sign the bill.
In response to this revived divestment effort, former President Donald Trump blamed Biden for the attacks on the app. “Just to let everyone know, especially young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday. “He’s the one pushing for closure, and doing it to help his Facebook friends become richer and more dominant, and able to continue fighting, perhaps illegally, the Republican Party.”
The Trump administration was the first to attack TikTok. In 2020, Trump signed a series of executive orders banning apps like TikTok, Alipay and WeChat. Legal challenges have prevented these orders from being implemented. Last year, Montana lawmakers voted to ban the appbut one federal judge blocked the law from taking effect, saying it “probably violates the First Amendment.” After the bill passed the House on Saturday, the company’s head of public policy, Michael Beckerman, told staff in email that if the bill were signed into law, “we would go to court for a legal challenge.”
Many lawmakers cited national security and data privacy concerns as the primary motivation for supporting the bill.
“Congress is not acting to punish ByteDance, TikTok or any other individual company,” Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell said in a speech Tuesday. , our military, our men and women, and our U.S. government personnel.
Critics of a ban have long argued that passing a sweeping data privacy bill could satisfy most of lawmakers’ complaints about TikTok’s security, as well as those filed by U.S.-based companies. United.
“Congress could pass comprehensive consumer privacy legislation, which I believe would take more meaningful steps to address many of the data privacy concerns that have been raised about TikTok,” said Kate Ruane, director of free expression at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Project. “And I don’t think there is currently any public evidence that there is extreme, serious, immediate harm.”
