Washington – A law that could lead to a national ban on TikTok cleared the Senate Tuesday night in a bipartisan 79-18 vote, posing one of the most serious threats to the immensely popular social media app’s U.S. operations.
Some lawmakers insist they do not want to ban the platform used by about 170 million Americans, arguing the choice falls to ByteDance, TikTok’s China-based parent company.
To keep TikTok up and running in the US, ByteDance must sell its stake in TikTok and has up to a year to do so, according to the legislation, which was signed into law on Wednesday by President Biden. But the Chinese government, which would have to approve any sale, opposes a forced sale. Without a divestment, the company would lose access to app stores and web hosting providers, effectively banning them from the United States. The timeline could be extended due to an expected legal battle.
“This is not an effort to take away your voice… This is not a ban on a service that you value,” Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a speech Tuesday. , acknowledging that many Americans are skeptical of the legislation. “At the end of the day, they haven’t seen what Congress has seen.”
Why does Congress want to ban TikTok?
Lawmakers are suspicious of the video-sharing app’s ties to China and have sought to regulate it, although previous efforts to broadly restrict it have been unsuccessful. U.S. officials have repeatedly warned that TikTok threatens national security because the Chinese government could use it to spy on Americans or weaponize it to covertly influence the American public by amplifying or suppressing certain content.
Concern is justified, U.S. officials say, because Chinese national security laws require organizations to cooperate with intelligence gathering. FBI Director Christopher Wray told members of the House Intelligence Committee in March that the Chinese government could compromise Americans’ devices through software.
“This app is a spy balloon on Americans’ phones” that is “used to monitor and exploit Americans’ personal information,” Rep. Michael McCaul, a Republican from Texas who chairs the Senate Committee, told the House on Saturday. Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives. passed the bill as part of a broader foreign aid package.
In classified briefings, lawmakers have learned “how rivers of data are being collected and shared in ways that are not well aligned with American security interests,” Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware, said Tuesday.
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said last month that the Chinese government has the ability to influence “many young people” who use TikTok as their primary source of news.
“That’s a national security concern,” Rubio said.
Warner said Tuesday that the fact that Chinese diplomats are lobbying congressional staff against the legislation, which was first reported by politicalshows “how much (Chinese President) Xi Jinping has invested in this product.”
Senate Minority Leader John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, called the lobbying effort “a striking confirmation of the value the Chinese government places on its ability to access Americans’ information and shape your experience on TikTok.
Arguments against banning TikTok
TikTok has denied being beholden to the Chinese government and has accused lawmakers who want to restrict it of trampling on citizens’ free speech rights. TikTok has vowed to file a legal challenge, calling the law “unconstitutional.”
“We will continue to fight, as this legislation is a clear violation of the First Amendment rights of the 170 million Americans on TikTok and would have devastating consequences for the 7 million small businesses that use TikTok to reach new customers, sell their products , and create new jobs, this is the beginning, not the end of this long process,” TikTok executive Michael Beckerman said in an internal company memo obtained by CBS News and sent to TikTok staff on Saturday .
In a video posted Wednesday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said that “the facts and the Constitution are on our side and we hope to prevail again.” He said the company has invested billions of dollars to protect user data and “keep our platform free from outside manipulation.”
TikTok began an initiative known as “Project Texas” in 2022 to safeguard American users’ data on servers in the US and ease lawmakers’ fears. But Warner argued Tuesday that the move was insufficient because it would still allow TikTok’s algorithm and source code to remain in China, making them “subject to exploitation by the Chinese government.”
Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts said on the Senate floor Tuesday that TikTok poses national security risks, but the legislation amounted to “censorship” because it could deny Americans access to a platform they rely on for news, purposes. trading, building a community and connecting with others.
“We must be very clear about the likely outcome of this law,” Markey said. “It’s really just a TikTok ban. And once we properly recognize that this bill is a TikTok ban, we’ll be able to better see its impact on free expression.”
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., wrote in a recent opinion article that the law could be a gateway for the government to force other companies to sell.
“If the damage to one company were not enough, there is a very real danger that this clumsy attack on TikTok could give the government the power to force the sale of other companies,” he wrote and predicted that the Supreme Court would ultimately rule. that the law is unconstitutional.
Nikole Killion and Alan He contributed to this report.