House passes bill that could ban TikTok in the US

Hold onto your thirst traps, folks. The drama surrounding TikTok in the US just took a sharp turn.

The US House of Representatives, in a bipartisan vote (352-65), has recently passed a bill forcing ByteDance to divest TikTok or face a potential ban in the US.

Next stop: the Senate. Senator Rand Paul, a vocal opponent of the ban, might offer a glimmer of hope for TikTok users. But if the bill muscles through, President Biden, despite his campaign’s recent TikTok foray, has pledged to sign it into law.

If enacted, the legislation gives ByteDance just six months to sell TikTok or face a ban. US companies would be prohibited from hosting the app or providing web services, essentially erasing TikTok from the App Store and Google Play in the region.

The White House has been framing the issue as a matter of national security. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan summed it up this way: “Do we want TikTok, as a platform, to be owned by an American company or owned by China? Do we want the data from TikTok – children’s data, adults’ data – to be going, to be staying here in America or going to China?”

Unsurprisingly, China is not happy. The Chinese Foreign Ministry has slammed the legislation, arguing that “though the U.S. has never found any evidence of TikTok posing a threat to the U.S.’s national security, it has never stopped going after TikTok.”

TikTok isn’t the only one sweating. The “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” might also target WeChat (owned by Chinese giant Tencent) along with other high-profile Chinese-owned apps.

Civil liberties groups like the EFF and ACLU are also throwing shade on the ban. They argue for stronger data privacy laws instead of singling out specific apps. The EFF even slammed the bill as an attempt to “silence the speech of millions of Americans.”

The stakes are massive. TikTok, a billion-user behemoth and the first app to crack USD 10 billion in in-app spending last year, represents a goldmine…or a potential huge loss, depending on the legal winds.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew emphasized in a new video that the ban “would take billions of dollars out of the pockets of creators and small businesses”. The estimated TikTok users in America amounts to 170 million.

Undeterred, Chew asserts that the company will utilize all legal options to prevent a ban. The bill grants the company 165 days to mount a legal challenge after President Biden signs it.