US House Foreign Affairs Committee voted along party lines to give President Joe Biden the power to ban the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok, in the latest setback for the popular video-sharing site.
Lawmakers voted 24 to 16 to approve the measure to grant the administration new powers to ban the ByteDance-owned app – used by over 100 million Americans – and other apps considered security risks. Democrats on the committee opposed the bill, which Republican chair Michael McCaul sponsored.
TikTok has come under increasing fire in recent weeks over fears that user data could end up in the hands of the Chinese government, undermining Western security interests.
The White House this week gave government agencies 30 days to ensure that TikTok is not on any federal devices and systems. More than 30 US states, Canada and European Union policy institutions have also banned TikTok from being loaded onto state-owned devices.
The fate of the latest measure – which gives Biden new powers to order a TikTok ban – is still being determined and faces significant hurdles before it would come law. The bill would need to be passed by the full House and US Senate, which Democrats control before it can go to Biden. McCaul told Reuters after the vote that he expects the TikTok bill will be taken up on the floor “fairly soon” and voted on by the full House this month.
Representative Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the committee, said he strongly opposed the legislation because it would “damage our allegiances across the globe, bring more companies into China’s sphere, destroy jobs here in the United States and undercut core American values of free speech and free enterprise.”
The US government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a robust national security body, in 2020 unanimously recommended ByteDance divest TikTok because of fears that user data could be passed on to China’s government.
TikTok and CFIUS have been negotiating data security requirements for over two years. TikTok said it has spent over $1.5 billion on rigorous data security efforts and rejects spying allegations.
Meeks said McCaul’s bill is “dangerously overbroad” and would require US sanctions on Korean and Taiwanese companies that supply Chinese companies with semiconductor chips and other equipment because of how broadly restrictions would apply to data transfers to China. The American Civil Liberties Union also urged Congress not to ban TikTok, saying it would violate the free speech rights of millions of Americans.
Last month, Biden said he was curious if Washington would ban TikTok. TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew will appear before the US Energy and Commerce Committee on 23 March.
Source: Reuters
In other news – Jack Dorsey is back with Twitter alternative called Bluesky
Twitter Co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey is back in the social media game, with the launch of his Twitter alternative called Bluesky that is now available in Apple App Store in the testing phase.
The Twitter-funded micro-blogging platform is available as an invite-only beta as of now, and a public launch is near, as per reports. Learn more
