A ban on TikTok is back on the table after the House of Representatives approved a new bill on Saturday that would address the issue that had been stalled in the Senate.
The bill would allow the Biden administration to ban TikTok nationwide unless it sells it from its China-based owner ByteDance within a year. This differs from a similar bill passed by the House of Representatives last month, giving TikTok an additional six months to find a U.S. buyer. The previous bill stalled in the Senate after Senate Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell raised several issues, including the short timeline for the sale.
It passed easily by a vote of 360-58.
“This app is a spy balloon on Americans' phones,” Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul said when introducing the bill in the full House on Saturday. “This is a modern-day Trojan horse… used to monitor and exploit Americans’ personal information.”
The TikTok backlash had bipartisan support. “National security experts are sounding the alarm that foreign adversaries are using every tool at their disposal, including apps like TikTok, to steal from Americans,” said New Jersey Democratic Representative Frank Pallone. “We are warning that they are accumulating sensitive data about “This bill takes decisive steps to reduce the ability of our adversaries to collect data on Americans and use it against us.”
Digital freedom groups oppose banning TikTok, citing First Amendment concerns and believe that removing TikTok would not address the underlying problem of widespread data collection. “The only solution to this pervasive ecosystem is to ban data collection in the first place,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights organization, wrote in a post last month. “Ultimately, our data will continue to be available to foreign adversaries from social media companies unless they are completely prohibited from collecting, retaining, and selling data.”
X owner Elon Musk also spoke out against the ban. “In my opinion, TikTok should not be banned in the United States, even though a ban may benefit X Platform,” he said. Posted Friday at X. “To do so would be against freedom of speech and expression. That's not what America stands for.”
In any case, it now seems almost certain that investment will be withdrawn or banned. The new measures were in addition to a multibillion-dollar foreign aid package directed to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. The aid is being fast-tracked after Iran's retaliatory attacks on Israel last week, and will be harder for the Senate to avoid passing.
Mr Cantwell supported this latest package, saying in a statement on Wednesday: “I am very pleased that Speaker Johnson and the House leadership have taken up my proposal to extend the ByteDance sale period from six months to one year. We need an extension to the sale period to allow enough time to complete the transaction, and I support this latest bill.”
In recent years, Congress has tried and failed to force a sale of TikTok. Republicans and Democrats are concerned that the app could provide a trove of U.S. user data to the Chinese government and pose a risk to U.S. national security. But Congress has provided little evidence to support those claims, and TikTok and its supporters argue that banning the app violates their free speech rights.