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April 25, 2024

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US Senate passes bill banning TikTok, Biden set to make it law

Source: Agencies | 00:00 UTC+8 April 25, 2024 | Print Edition

The US Senate voted by a wide margin late on Tuesday in favor of legislation that would ban TikTok in the United States if owner, the Chinese tech firm ByteDance, fails to divest the popular short video app over the next nine months to a year.

The bill was passed by the US House of Representatives on Saturday and US President Joe Biden has said he will sign it into law today.

TikTok is set to challenge the bill on First Amendment grounds and TikTok users are also expected to again take legal action. A US judge in Montana in November blocked a state ban on TikTok, citing free speech grounds.

The American Civil Liberties Union said banning or requiring divestiture 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, that will invite copycat measures by other countries.”

TikTok complained after Saturday’s House vote, saying it was “unfortunate” that lawmakers sought to “jam through a ban bill that would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans, devastate 7 million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes US$24 billion to the US economy, annually.”

The Senate voted 79 to 18 in favor of the bill, which was attached to a measure to provide US$95 billion in mostly military aid. The TikTok divestment directive won fast-track approval after being introduced just weeks ago.

In 2020, then-President Donald Trump was blocked by the courts in his bid to block TikTok and Chinese-owned WeChat, a unit of Tencent, in the US.

However, the new legislation is likely to give the Biden administration a stronger legal footing to ban TikTok if ByteDance fails to divest the app, experts say.

If ByteDance failed to divest TikTok, app stores operated by Apple, Alphabet’s Google and others could not legally offer TikTok or provide web hosting services to ByteDance-controlled applications or TikTok’s website.

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden said he was concerned the bill “provides broad authority that could be abused by a future administration to violate Americans’ First Amendment rights.”

Once the bill is signed into law, ByteDance will have 270 days to divest TikTok’s US operations with a possible three-month extension if there are signs a deal is progressing.

Steven Mnuchin, who served as US treasury secretary under Trump, has said he is interested in acquiring TikTok and has assembled a group of investors.

Elon Musk, the owner of X, formerly Twitter, has come out against banning TikTok, saying “doing so would be contrary to freedom of speech and expression.”

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