In addition to TikTok’s ongoing licensing dispute with Universal Music Group, the short video platform is now facing a bill that could effectively ban it from the United States unless parent company ByteDance sells it.
A bipartisan group of 19 lawmakers, headed by Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and backed by Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, have introduced a bill that, if passed into law, would give TikTok’s parent company, China-based ByteDance, 165 days (just short of six months) to divest its holdings in TikTok, or face having the platform banned from app stores.
The law would reportedly not affect the ability of app stores to offer TikTok outside the US.
“This is my message to TikTok: break up with the Chinese Communist Party or lose access to your American users,” said Rep. Gallagher, who heads the House Select Committee on China, as quoted by Reuters.
“America’s foremost adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States.”
“We implore ByteDance to sell TikTok so that its American users can enjoy their dance videos, their bad lip-sync, everything else that goes along with TikTok,” Rep. Krishnamoorthi told reporters on Wednesday, as quoted by Bloomberg.
“We ask American users of TikTok to tell ByteDance to sell the platform. And this bill provides the way.”
In a statement issued on X and sent to media, TikTok called the bill “an outright ban of TikTok, no matter how much the authors try to disguise it. This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs.”
The American Civil Liberties Union called the bill unconstitutional, and said lawmakers were “once again attempting to trade our First Amendment rights for cheap political points during an election year,” Reuters reported.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee is expected to consider the bill for a vote on Thursday.
“This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs.”
TikTok
The bill would also create a mechanism by which the US president could take action against social media applications that are controlled by companies in China, Iran, North Korea and Russia.
With political tensions between China and the West growing in recent years, many lawmakers in the US and elsewhere have expressed concerns that TikTok could be sharing user data with the Chinese government.
Chinese regulations require domestic companies, such as ByteDance, to share information with the government in Beijing upon request.
In testimony before the US Congress last year, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew denied that the app is sharing user information with the Chinese government, and stressed the company’s “Project Texas,” which would see US user data shifted onto Oracle servers in Texas.
Additionally, some lawmakers have expressed fears that TikTok could be used to sow disinformation during elections, and to skew public attitudes on political issues. A recent study found that, amid the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, pro-Palestinian posts surfaced considerably more often on TikTok than on Instagram. China has largely sided with Gaza during the conflict.
A White House official who spoke to Bloomberg anonymously said the Biden administration “welcomed” the bill, but wanted to be sure that it was on “solid legal footing.” President Joe Biden recently began using TikTok as part of his re-election campaign.
This is not the first time that lawmakers in Washington, and elsewhere in the US, have attempted to pass legislation to ban or severely restrict access to TikTok.
In March of last year, a bill was tabled in the US Senate that would have given the president the authority to ban TikTok nationwide. However, that bill floundered over concerns about its constitutionality, and amid lobbying by TikTok. It has never been brought to a vote.
“This is my message to TikTok: break up with the Chinese Communist Party or lose access to your American users.”
Rep. Mike Gallagher, US House of Representatives
A congressional aide who spoke to the Financial Times said the new bill was designed to overcome concerns about infringement of free speech.
Another congressional aide said support for a bill acting to curtail TikTok, or at least sever its connections to China, has been growing in Congress following classified briefings by officials on the potential security risks of the platform.
Last year, the state of Montana passed a law banning app stores from offering TikTok in the state. That law was challenged by TikTok and a group of TikTok users on freedom of speech grounds, and was blocked by a federal judge this past December.
A number of jurisdictions worldwide, including the US, UK and European Union, have banned government employees from installing TikTok on government-issued devices.Music Business Worldwide
