By: Nick Gambino
It’s no secret to anyone keeping an eye on the news that TikTok has been fighting for dear life as the US Government has been trying to ban the app from this country. And now things are getting real serious.
A new foreign aid package passed the House of Representatives this past weekend. In said package resides the order to ban TikTok from our borders. It’s one of those rare bipartisan pushes with a 360-58 votes in favor. President Biden already stated that if the ban comes across his desk, he’ll sign it. But first, the US Senate has to weigh in and vote on it this coming week.
If you expect TikTok to go quietly into the night then you’re underestimating the amount of money at stake here and how much people love the dough. They intend to battle this out tooth and nail, according to an internal memo first reported on by The Information.
“At the stage that the bill is signed, we will move to the courts for a legal challenge,” Michael Beckerman, Head of Public Policy at TikTok in the Americas, said in the memo referencing the most recent proverbial nail in the coffin. “We’ll continue to fight, as this legislation is a clear violation of the first amendment right of the 170 million Americans on TikTok.”
The whole battle comes down to something very simple. TikTok is Chinese-owned and therefore, most likely “China-owned.” Their parent company is ByteDance. That poses a real national security threat as any country – especially one we have a tenuous relationship with – having access to US citizens’ data is a ticking time bomb.
The popular social media app exploded onto the scene just a few short years ago, gaining a ton of traction during the pandemic. It’s steadily grown to an impressive number of daily active users, allowing it to compete with veteran social platforms like Facebook, Instagram and X/Twitter.
The difference is those apps are homegrown here in the U.S. TikTok is not and so has come under severe scrutiny. We’ll know more later this week whether the US Senate votes to pass the ban. If it does and Biden signs it, the company will have nine months to sell TikTok or be banned from the US.
