Growing concerns among US lawmakers that China could access Americans’ data or surveil them using the app led to the bill’s passage by the House of Representatives on Saturday, and US President Joe Biden announced that he will promulgate it on Wednesday.
“For years we allowed the Chinese Communist Party to control one of America’s most popular apps, which was a dangerously narrow view,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee. “A new law will require its Chinese owner to sell the app. This is a good move for America,” he added.
Asked about the vote in the Senate, the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Wednesday referred to clarifications it made in March, when the House of Representatives passed a similar bill.
At the time, the ministry criticized the legislation, claiming that “although the US has never found evidence that TikTok poses a threat to US national security, it has never stopped hunting TikTok.”
The four-year battle over TikTok, which is used by 170 million people in the United States, is just one front in the war between Washington and Beijing over the Internet and technology.
Last week, Apple announced that Beijing had ordered it to remove Meta Platforms’ apps WhatsApp and Threads from the App Store in China due to concerns about Chinese national security.
TikTok is set to challenge the bill on First Amendment grounds, and users of the app are also expected to go to court again. A US judge in Montana blocked a state ban on TikTok in November, citing free speech reasons.
The American Civil Liberties Union said banning or requiring the sale of TikTok would “set an alarming global precedent for excessive government control over social media platforms. (…) If the United States now bans a foreign-owned platform, this will invite other countries to take similar measures”.
TikTok, which says it has not and will not share US user data with the Chinese government, did not immediately comment but told employees it would quickly go to court to try to block the legislation.
“This is the beginning, not the end, of this long process,” TikTok told employees on Saturday in an email seen by Reuters.
The Senate voted 79 to 18 in favor of the bill, which was attached to the larger bill providing $95 billion in mostly military aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. TikTok’s sales directive won swift approval after it was introduced just a few weeks ago.
Reuters is trying to anticipate and it will most likely happen next with TikTok.
Countdown
From the moment Biden signs the bill into law, a 270-day period begins in which ByteDance must sell TikTok. If ByteDance is close to selling the app in the U.S. toward the end of the nine-month period, the president can authorize another 90 days for the deal to be completed.
If the bill is enacted this week, as expected, the 270-day period will end around the inauguration of the next president of the United States on Jan. 20, 2025, leaving the decision on the additional three months to either Democrat Biden, who wants to be re-elected, or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
TikTok is suing the US government
Once the bill is enacted, TikTok is expected to sue the US to stop it. TikTok’s lawyers are also expected to ask the court for a preliminary injunction.
TikTok would like a court order to stop the law from being enforced so that its full lawsuit challenging the law’s constitutionality can move forward. The legal proceedings are unlikely to be completed by the end of the year.
Last year, TikTok took similar legal action to stop a ban on the app in the state of Montana, where a preliminary injunction was granted. If this scenario is a guide for TikTok’s efforts against the United States, the company itself and TikTok users will file separate lawsuits to stop the bill.
The bill establishes the United States Court of Appeals as the exclusive forum for any legal challenge.
How long will the whole process take?
If TikTok successfully obtains a preliminary injunction from the court, the forced sale process is halted, which could give TikTok more time to continue operating freely in the US.
In August 2020, Trump, who was president at the time, tried to ban both TikTok and WeChat, the Chinese-owned amoebae, but was blocked by the courts. In June 2021, Biden withdrew a series of Trump-era executive orders that had banned new downloads of the WeChat and TikTok apps.
Will TikTok change?
The TikTok app shouldn’t change for its 170 million US users between now and the end of its sales period, which is the first four months of 2025.
What does the government in Beijing say?
China has a list of technologies that would need approval from the government in Beijing before being exported. Experts say TikTok’s approval algorithm would fall on that list.
Photo: Profimedia Images
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