Congress has finalized legislation that could force the video-sharing app, TikTok, to be sold or face a potential nationwide ban in the United States.
The Senate voted 79-18 on Tuesday to approve the bipartisan measure as part of a broader package providing aid to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. The bill, which had previously cleared the House on Saturday, now heads to President Biden’s desk, where he is expected to sign it into law.
The TikTok provision gives the app’s parent company ByteDance 270 days to divest its ownership stake in the platform’s US operations. Failure to comply would result in TikTok being prohibited from US app stores and cut off from internet hosting services, effectively blocking new downloads and limiting user access.
If signed this week, the deadline for ByteDance to sell TikTok would fall in January 2025, though the President maintains the authority to grant a 90-day extension if sufficient progress is made toward a sale.
This legislation is due to the longstanding national security concerns raised by US officials over TikTok’s ties to China. Despite ByteDance’s efforts to ring-fence the app’s US user data, skeptics have warned the app could be leveraged to advance Beijing’s interests or facilitate data harvesting and censorship.
For now, existing users can continue accessing the app as normal pending any ownership changes or a potential ban further down the line. However, the app’s millions of US users and creators may soon see increased advocacy efforts aimed at opposing the divestment order.
The coming months will determine if the immensely popular app can be extricated from its Chinese parent company’s control or face an unprecedented ban.
