The U.S. Congress on Tuesday finalized legislation that could lead to a ban on TikTok across the United States, which would increase the huge threat to the company's operations in the United States, CNN reports, according to UNN.
Details
The bill was passed by the U.S. Senate as part of a large-scale foreign aid package designed to support Israel and Ukraine. It was approved by the US House of Representatives on Saturday. It now heads to the desk of US President Joe Biden. If he signs the bill, as expected, TikTok will be forced to find a new owner within months or be banned from the United States entirely.
Here's what we know and what impact it will have:
What will happen because of the new TikTok legislation in the U.S.
The bill approved this week is an updated version of a bill that US House lawmakers approved in March. It gives TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, 270 days to sell TikTok. Failure to do so will have serious consequences: TikTok will be banned from US app stores and internet hosting services that support it.
This will effectively limit new downloads of the app and interaction with its content. If the deal is signed this week, the deadline for the sale will be January 2025. However, according to the law, Biden can extend the deadline by another 90 days if he determines that there is progress on the sale, potentially giving TikTok up to a year before it has to face a ban.
How did this get into the draft law on foreign aid?
The previous TikTok bill was passed by the House of Representatives, but stalled in the Senate. House Republicans this month attached a revised TikTok bill to a foreign aid package in a procedural move, hoping to force a Senate vote on the TikTok bill. Combining the bill with foreign aid, a top U.S. priority, has accelerated the passage of the TikTok bill and increased the likelihood of its passage.
Will Biden sign the TikTok bill?
Since the bill is part of a foreign aid package that Biden has actively supported, it is expected that he will sign it, and quickly. Biden also officially supported an earlier TikTok law, so there is no reason to believe that he will oppose the latest version of it, which gives TikTok a slightly longer runway and additional White House input on the forced sale.
What does this mean for using the program in the U.S.
If and when Biden signs the bill, TikTok will have a 270-day period to find a buyer. If it is unable to separate from ByteDance, TikTok users could hypothetically be cut off by January. But that's still a big if. So for now, TikTok fans in the U.S., as indicated, can continue to use the app as before, although they may start to see more creators - or the company itself - taking to the app to speak out against the legislation.
What are the features of TikTok
TikTok has vowed to sue the US government if Biden signs the bill. In a Saturday memo, a top TikTok executive wrote to employees that this would be "the beginning, not the end" of a long process to challenge what the company calls unconstitutional legislation that censors Americans' free speech rights and harms small businesses that depend on the app. In March, TikTok CEO Shu Chu vowed to continue the fight, "including by exercising our legal rights.
Is there a precedent in the TikTok case?
First Amendment experts say that a bill that would ultimately lead to censorship of TikTok users could be rejected by the courts.
"Longstanding Supreme Court precedent protects Americans' First Amendment right to access information, ideas, and media from abroad," said Nadine Farid Johnson, policy director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. - "By banning TikTok, the bill would infringe on that right, but without any real impact. China and other foreign adversaries will still be able to buy sensitive American data from data brokers on the open market.
An appeal to the court could result in a temporary blocking of this measure during the court proceedings, which are likely to last several years. But if the court refuses to issue a temporary restraining order, TikTok may have to try its best to comply with the law.
So what if TikTok is sold to someone else?
The problem is that TikTok's parent company is subject to Chinese law, and the Chinese government is known to be against the sale.
In recent years, China has imposed export controls on algorithms, a policy that would seem to cover the incredibly successful algorithm behind TikTok's recommendation system.
If the Chinese government is unwilling to allow ByteDance to abandon the TikTok algorithm, it could block the sale entirely. Alternatively, it could allow TikTok to be sold, but without the lucrative algorithm that forms the basis of its popularity.
Can TikTok succeed without its algorithm? This would be a difficult question that the company would face in the event of a forced sale. Without the "secret sauce" that has brought the app to 170 million users in the United States, the app could be "dead," the publication writes.