The US House of Representatives have once again passed another bill into the Senate that could see the social media platform, TikTok, banned in the US, unless its parent company, ByteDance, divests it. Adding further insult to injury, this particular bill may receive a decision sooner than the previous bill, given its nature.
Elaborating further, the TikTok bill, which passed 360-58, is part of a larger bill related to sanctions and more specifically, it is part of a package of foreign aid bills that seek to provide military aid to Ukraine and Israel, as well as humanitarian aid to Gaza. As you can imagine, the latter presents a sense of urgency, and weaving the TikTok bill into these measures means that the Senate won’t be able to sit on its hands or twiddle its thumbs for too long, and will have to take a vote on it.
ByteDance’s battle against the US government began in 2020, when former President Donald Trump signed two executive orders, ordering the owner of TikTok to divest its US business, or suffer the consequences. Since then, the threat of having the banhammer brought down has loomed over it; President Biden has even backed the bill publicly, saying that he would sign it, if and when it passes Congress.
ByteDance categorically denies that TikTok collects or shares the personal data of its US customers with the Chinese government. It’s ironic, since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) reportedly doesn’t allow the app to be accessed by 1.4 billion Chinese people. Because of this, ByteDance runs a separate version of its app in the country, called Douyin.
(Source: The Verge)
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