The Senate passed a bill Tuesday that would force TikTok’s Chinese parent company to sell the social media platform under threat of a ban. It’s a controversial move by US lawmakers that is expected to face legal challenges and disrupt the lives of content creators who rely on the short video app for income.
The TikTok legislation was included in a larger $95 billion package that provides foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel, and passed by a vote of 79 to 18. It now moves to President Joe Biden, who supported the TikTok proposal and said he would sign the package as will only receive it.
House Republicans’ decision last week to include the TikTok bill as a high-priority package helped speed up its passage in Congress and came after negotiations with the Senate, where an earlier version of the bill had stalled. That version would give TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, six months to sell its stake in the platform. But that has prompted skepticism from some key lawmakers concerned that there is too little time to complete a complex deal that could cost tens of billions of dollars.
The revised legislation extends the deadline, giving ByteDance nine months to sell TikTok and a possible three-month extension if the sale is still ongoing. The bill would also prohibit the company from controlling TikTok’s secret sauce: the algorithm that feeds users videos based on their interests and has made the platform a trend-setting phenomenon.
The passage of the law is the culmination of long-standing bipartisan concerns in Washington about Chinese threats and the ownership of TikTok, which is used by 170 million Americans. For years, lawmakers and administration officials have expressed concerns that Chinese authorities could force ByteDance to hand over U.S. user data or influence Americans by suppressing or promoting certain content on TikTok.
“Congress is not taking action to punish ByteDance, TikTok or any other individual company,” said Senate Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell. “Congress is taking action to prevent foreign adversaries from conducting espionage, surveillance, and defamation operations that harm vulnerable Americans, our servicemen and women, and our U.S. government personnel.”
Opponents of the bill argue that the Chinese government could easily obtain information about Americans through other means, including through commercial data brokers that trade in personal information. The foreign aid package includes a provision that would prohibit data brokers from selling or renting “sensitive personally identifiable data” to North Korea, China, Russia, Iran or entities in those countries. But it has faced some opposition, including from the American Civil Liberties Union, which argues that the language is written too broadly and could trap journalists and others publishing personal information.
Many opponents of TikTok’s measure argue that the best way to protect U.S. consumers is to pass a comprehensive federal data privacy law that targets all companies, regardless of their origin. They also note that the US has not provided public evidence that TikTok is sharing information about US users with Chinese authorities or that Chinese officials have ever modified its algorithm.
“Banning TikTok would be an extraordinary step that requires extraordinary justification,” said Becca Branum, deputy director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Technology, which advocates for digital rights. “Extending the deadline for asset sales does not justify the urgency of the threat to the public and does not address the fundamental constitutional flaws in the legislation.”
China had previously said it would oppose the forced sale of TikTok and has made it clear this time that it is opposed. TikTok, which has long denied it is a security threat, is also preparing a lawsuit to block the law.
“At the signing stage of the bill, we will seek legal action,” Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head of public policy for the Americas, wrote in a memo sent to employees Saturday and obtained by The Associated Press.
“This is the beginning, not the end, of this long process,” Beckerman wrote.
The company has had some success in resolving lawsuits in the past, but has never tried to stop federal legislation from taking effect.
In November, federal judge blocks Montana law it would ban TikTok statewide after the company and five content creators using the platform filed a lawsuit. Three years earlier, federal courts blocked an executive order issued by then-President Donald Trump banning TikTok after the company sued on the grounds that the order violated free speech and due process rights.
The Trump administration then brokered a deal in which U.S. corporations Oracle and Walmart acquired a large stake in TikTok. But the sale never took place.
Trump, who is running for president again this year, now says he opposes a potential ban.
Since then, TikTok has been negotiating its future with the secretive Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a little-known government agency tasked with investigating corporate deals for national security purposes.
On Sunday, Erich Andersen, ByteDance’s chief lawyer who has been negotiating with the US government for years, told his team he was leaving his position.
“As I began reflecting several months ago on the stresses of the past few years and the new generation of challenges that lie ahead, I decided it was time to pass the torch to a new leader,” Andersen wrote in an internal memo. This was reported by the AP agency. He said the decision to resign was entirely his and was made several months ago in discussions with senior management of the company.
Meanwhile, TikTok content creators who rely on the app trying to make their voices heard. Earlier Tuesday, some creators gathered in front of the Capitol building to protest the bill and carry signs that read, “I’m one of the 170 million Americans on TikTok,” among other things.
Tiffany Cianci, a content creator who has more than 140,000 followers on the platform and has encouraged people to come, said she spent Monday evening picking up creators from D.C. airports. Some came from as far away as Nevada and California. Others drove overnight from South Carolina or took a bus from upstate New York.
Cianci says she believes TikTok is currently the safest platform for users due to Project Texas, TikTok’s $1.5 billion mitigation plan to store US user data on servers owned and maintained by the tech giant Oracle.
“If our data is not secure on TikTok,” she said. “I would ask why is the president on TikTok?“