After a 50-0 vote favoring compelling TikTok‘s parent company to sell the app or risk having it stopped, the US is just one step away from outlawing the platform.
The vote by the Energy and Commerce Committee is the first major step toward the US government’s planned takedown of TikTok, which has 170 million users nationwide.
The popular app’s owner, ByteDance, will have six months to divest itself or risk being banned in the US if the decision is expedited by the US House of Representatives next week.
The US has a tense relationship with the application. In 2020, the courts stopped former President Donald Trump’s attempted attempt to outlaw the app.
While the state of Montana has pushed to outlaw the app for all users, government employees are prohibited from using it on work-related devices in numerous states.
Concern mainly lies over fears the company will share data with the Chinese government.
House majority leader Steve Scalise said on X lawmakers will vote next week ‘to force TikTok to sever their ties with the Chinese Communist party’.
TikTok maintains it will not share US data with authorities, and argues the bill amounts to a ban and it is not clear if China would approve any sale, or that it could be divested in six months.
‘This legislation has a predetermined outcome: a total ban of TikTok in the United States,’ TikTok said after the vote.
‘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.’
Before the vote, the lawmakers had a closed-door classified briefing on national security concerns about TikTok’s Chinese ownership.
Representative Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the committee, said his hope was the law ‘will force divestment of TikTok and Americans will be able to continue to use this and other similarly situated platforms without the risk that they are being operated and controlled by our adversaries’.
Representative Mike Gallagher, the Republican chairman of the House Select China committee, and representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, the panel’s top Democrat, introduced legislation to address national security concerns posed by Chinese ownership of the app.
🚨 The @HouseCommerce Committee just voted 50-0 to force TikTok to sever their ties with the Chinese Communist Party. I will bring this critical national security bill to the House floor for a vote next week.
— Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) March 7, 2024
‘TikTok could live on and people could do whatever they want on it provided there is that separation,’ Gallagher said, urging US ByteDance investors to support a sale.
‘It is not a ban – think of this as a surgery designed to remove the tumour and thereby save the patient in the process.’
The potential ban does not sit well with users, and Capitol Hill was flooded with phone calls urging lawmakers not to back the ban.
However, it may not be just TikTok that could be caught in the net, as when asked if the bill could impact the US operations of Tencent’s WeChat, which Trump sought to ban in 2020, Gallagher said he would not say, but added that ‘going forward, we can debate what companies fall’ under the bill.
However, TikTok still proves to be popular across the nation – even at the highest level. Last month, President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign joined the app.
