The House of Representatives has passed a revised version of the “TikTok ban” legislation for the second time in as many months. The bill, which could eventually ban TikTok, is now on its way to the Senate for approval. The earlier version of the bill, which required TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to either sell the video app or face a ban in the U.S., passed the House in March but stalled in the Senate.
The revised version of the legislation has been packaged with critical aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, in an effort to draw enough bipartisan support in the Senate. It also includes a key timeline shift: ByteDance would now need to sell the platform in nine months instead of six before the government would enforce its “ban” on the app. The President now has the option to grant a single 90-day extension to that nine-month deadline, essentially doubling ByteDance’s runway from six to 12 months.
The idea of “banning” the app began under President Trump but has been taken up in earnest by Congressional lawmakers and President Biden, who claim that China could use the app to disseminate propaganda or misinformation via the app’s algorithmic feeds. Despite expressing unequivocal support for the idea of banning TikTok, President Biden still uses the platform: his re-election campaign opened an account on TikTok in February.
On the House floor, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) said that TikTok is tantamount to “a spy balloon in Americans’ phones” that can “surveil and exploit America’s personal information.” TikTok has denied these claims and underscored the app’s impact on everyday Americans, stating that the ban bill would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans, devastate 7 million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes $24 billion to the U.S. economy, annually.
Read more at: mashable.com