The way to ban TikTok has been opened in the American legislature, the House of Representatives supported the bill with an overwhelming majority. What does Trump say, would Biden sign and what do Americans think?
What happened? The US House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed a bill that would give TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance six months to «alienate» the US assets of the social media app used by some 170 million Americans or face a ban.
What does this mean in practice? ByteDance should sell TikTok, at least the part that handles US users’ data. If they don’t break up the company and sell the American operation, they will ban its further operation.
Why was this done? In Washington, they have long been worried about TikTok’s Chinese parent company handing over the data of American users to the leadership in Beijing — based on several leaked cases, the concern is justified. Chinese ownership of TikTok potentially gives Beijing the ability to collect data on Americans and influence public opinion, US officials say.
Is it really dangerous? In fact, TikTok, which developed a platform for short, mainly music and dance videos, was initially very popular among teenagers, and for the younger generations, social media is more about this platform than Facebook. At the same time, it no longer only contains innocent videos, but also videos that talk about, for example, the Ukrainian or the Hamas-Israeli war. The spread of fake news and deepfake videos is a serious problem. On the platform, it is easy to reframe or tell in a false narrative important stories and public affairs that have an impact on local or world politics.
How to ban an app? According to the bill, if ByteDance does not act, then TikTok must be removed from US app stores and web hosting services.
Anyone against this? Yes. The move raises constitutional and liberties-related questions, such as on what basis businesses can be banned and whether the move affects the restriction of press freedom.Is banning TikTok a ban on propaganda or an unjustified restriction on freedom of speech? This is one of the important questions.And the other is, if politics can ban a company that serves 170 million people, what will you feel empowered to do next?Anyway, ByteDance itself says that it already stores the data of American users in American infrastructure — in Oracle’s cloud — and the concerns are exaggerated. According to the representatives who are already against the proposal, this step will not solve data protection problems, but will harm many users whose business depends on the platform, for example.
When does it come into force? It is not at all certain that this will happen, because even the Senate has to accept the proposal. However, his fate is far from clear here. What is certain is that US President Joe Biden has already indicated that he is ready to sign the legislation in its current form if it passes the Senate.
Phone calls . Democratic and Republican representatives told Reuters that their offices had received a large volume of calls from teenage TikTok users who opposed the law. At times, the volume of complaints exceeded calls for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.
What does Trump say? This week it became certain: Joe Biden and Donald Trump will clash again in the presidential election. The former Republican president would have banned TikTok by decree in 2020 (the court blocked it). Since then, however , his opinion has changed , and he no longer supports this because it is «too hard a decision». However, he still believes that TikTok is a national security threat.
What do Americans say? A recent poll by the AP and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 31 percent of American adults said they would support a nationwide ban on the use of TikTok, while 35 percent would oppose it.
