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TikTok's sale or ban in the US is one imminent step away
- The US Senate has passed the TikTok sale-or-ban bill, which is now being sent to the US President for his signature.
- The President has indicated his assent to the bill.
- Once signed, TikTok’s parent company will have nine months to sell TikTok or face a ban in the US.
TikTok is about to get banned in the US rather imminently, and the final nails in its coffin are about to be put in. The US Senate has passed a foreign aid package that includes a bill that would force TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell TikTok within nine months. There is a provision for a three-month extension, but if the sale does not materialize, it would get banned in the US.
The bill now passes to US President Joe Biden for his signature, who has made it clear through an official statement that he will sign the foreign aid package into law very soon.
I will sign this bill into law and address the American people as soon as it reaches my desk tomorrow so we can begin sending weapons and equipment to Ukraine this week. President Joe Biden
Once the foreign aid package and the bill within are signed by the US President, China-based ByteDance will have nine months to complete a sale of TikTok (which itself is based in Singapore). The President has the discretion to extend the timeline by another three months if there is progress toward a deal.
If the sale has not been completed by the end of the timeline, TikTok will be banned in the US, though there will very likely be legal challenges that will delay enforcement. Once banned, TikTok will not be available on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, and its website and service will also become inaccessible.
Congress is not acting to punish ByteDance, TikTok, or any other individual company. Congress is acting to prevent foreign adversaries from conducting espionage, surveillance, maligned operations, harming vulnerable Americans, our servicemen and women, and our US government personnel.Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell
TikTok has maintained steadfastly that it does not store US information in China and has not shared and would not share US user data with the Chinese government. TikTok had earlier proposed solutions to concerns around its data governance, but these were deemed inadequate as TikTok’s algorithm, source code, and development activities would remain in China under ByteDance control and “subject to Chinese government exploitation.”
Reuters notes that TikTok is set to challenge the bill on First Amendment grounds. Bloomberg reports that Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head of public policy for America, noted in an internal memo to US staff last week that “this is the beginning, not the end of this long process.”
TikTok users are also expected to take legal action. In the past, a US judge in Montana had blocked a state ban on TikTok, citing free speech.