TikTok is facing a possible nationwide ban across the United States (US) after the House of Representatives approved on Wednesday a controversial piece of legislation targeting the popular short-video platform.
The proposed law received 352 votes in favour and 65 opposing it. It is now headed to the 100-member Senate where its fate will be decided. Some senators, however, have expressed apprehension over the legislation and called for amendments.
TikTok, which boasts over 170 million users in the US, has been facing intense regulatory scrutiny in the country in connection with the state’s security affairs.
TikTok’s Chinese origins — its parent company ByteDance — has been the focus of regulatory glare in both the UK and US, where a vast majority of lawmakers and politicians have been persistently calling for a ban against the platform, arguing ByteDance could be forced into transferring sensitive US user data to the Chinese government. The bill forces TikTok to divest from ByteDance within six months or be permanently banned.
The bill, called “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act”, will be signed into law by President Joe Biden, who made this announcement last week. Several TikTok users, including content creators, gathered outside the Capitol in Washington to protest against the bill.
China responded in strong words to the legislation, saying the TikTok ban “will inevitably come back to bite the United States itself”.
“Although the United States has never found evidence that TikTok threatens US national security, it has not stopped suppressing TikTok,” said Wang Wenbin, spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry. “This kind of bullying behaviour that cannot win in fair competition disrupts companies’ normal business activity, damages the confidence of international investors in the investment environment, and damages the normal international economic and trade order.”
TikTok is banned from government-issued devices in a number of countries, including Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Denmark, as well as the European Union (EU). The short-video platform was banned by the Indian government in 2020 after cross-border skirmishes with China, impacting 120 million users.
Nepal, on the other hand, banned TikTok in November last year for “disrupting social harmony”. In Pakistan, the app has been banned four times, which demonstrated a radically adverse impact on small businesses and content creators that leveraged TikTok’s mass appeal and utilised it to their advantage.
Pakistan also tops the list of TikTok markets to have the largest volume of videos removed quarterly for violating its community guidelines without any clear details regarding the massive content takedowns. The lack of transparency around whether content removals were initiated on government requests and on what grounds creates an environment of uncertainty.
