TikTok’s efforts to continue operating in the US under Chinese parent company ByteDance appear doomed after a majority of House lawmakers passed a bill that aims to force the Beijing headquartered tech firm to divest from the wildly popular short video platform or see it removed from app stores in the country. The bill still needs to pass the Senate, but President Joe Biden has indicated he will sign it into law if it reaches his desk.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted 352-65 on the bill. Of the 65 legislators who voted against it, 50 were Democrats, casting some uncertainty on whether the bill will pass in the Democrat-majority Senate. The potential legislation is also likely to face legal challenges from TikTok.
Why it matters: If ByteDance agrees to sell TikTok, one of China’s most successful apps worldwide, it would bring the Beijing-based company billions of dollars in immediate income, but the longer-term impact on the firm’s value is uncertain. The tug-of-war over the app also reflects the high-profile tensions between the US and China.
Details: TikTok labeled the House’s voting process “secret” in a statement released after the result. The platform insisted on characterizing the bill as a “ban”, while emphasizing that it hosts 170 million users and 7 million small businesses in the US market in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
- Chinese nationalist Hu Xijin, who previously served as editor-in-chief of the state-run Global Times newspaper, said in a recent social media post that the US’s concern over TikTok’s threat to national security is “grossly exaggerated,” and that this is a fact “everyone in the world knows.” The commentator implored the short video app not to “get weak in the knees,” adding that it will share a bright future if it wins this “war.”
- The video-sharing platform sent local users in the US a pop-up notification last week encouraging them to call their political representatives and urge them to fight against the bill. The average TikTok user in the US is an adult “well past college age,” chief executive Shou Zi Chew revealed in his testimony on Capitol Hill last March.
- While Biden has shown broad support for the bill – despite his election campaign recently joining the platform – his rival in the upcoming US presidential election, Donald Trump, has made a U-turn on the legislation, voicing concerns that banning TikTok would only empower Facebook owner Meta. “There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it,” Trump said in a recent CNBC interview, despite his administration also previously attempting to force ByteDance to sell the app.
Context: According to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit organization that tracks lobbying data, ByteDance spent a record $8.74 million on federal lobbying last year, nearly double its spending in 2022.
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