Calling it a “foreign adversary-controlled application”, US lawmakers – comprising of both Republicans and Democrats – have introduced a bill that gives ByteDance, the Chinese owners of TikTok, six months to divest its popular social media platform or face a ban in the country.
Known as ‘Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act’, the bill is co-sponsored by Mike Gallagher, Republican chair of the House of Representatives’ select China committee and Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi, who co-chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
The bill will make it unlawful for app stores operated by Apple, Google and others to offer TikTok or to provide web hosting services to ByteDance-controlled applications. The Chinese company will have 165 days to divest TikTok, which is used by more than 170 million Americans.
An initial vote is expected on Thursday.
Gallagher said: “This is my message to TikTok: break up with the Chinese Communist Party or lose access to your American users. America’s foremost adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States.”
Krishnamoorthi added that the bill will protect against “the digital surveillance and influence operations of regimes that could weaponise their personal data against them.”
In a statement, the app spokesperson Alex Haurek said: “This bill is 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.”
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, in a lengthy Congressional hearing last year, said that “ByteDance is not an agent of China or of any other country” and that it has not, and would not, share US user data with the Chinese government.
TikTok faces government and campus bans
Last year, the White House told federal agencies they had 30 days to delete the app from government devices, and more than two dozen states have banned TikTok on government-issued devices. Many colleges — like the University of Texas at Austin, Auburn University, and Boise State University — have blocked it from campus WiFi networks.
A US judge in late November blocked Montana’s first-of-its kind state ban on the short video platform, saying it violated the free speech rights of users.
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