House overwhelmingly voted for bill that could ban TikTok in US
TikTok is now one step closer to facing US app store removal after a successful US House vote Wednesday.
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Your support makes all the difference.The US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to pass a bill that could remove TikTok from US app stores.
The vote succeeded 352-65, with the majority of nos coming from Democrats on Wednesday.
If the bill becomes law it will require the Chinese firm Bytedance to divest from TikTok and other applications that it owns within 180 days. If ByteDance does not divest, TikTok would be removed from US app stores.
Legislators have argued that Bytedance could give the Chinese government access to TikTok user’s data, pointing to national security laws that require companies to help with intelligence gathering.
The bill will now require a successful US Senate vote and subsequent Presidential signature to become law.
Despite its overwhelming success, the bill also received bipartisan opposition.
Representative Jim Himes, a Democrat and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said he was not in favour of the potential ban that could result from the bill. Meanwhile, Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar told The Independent she was not convinced to vote yes even after a national security briefing.
Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene also voted no, telling The Independent it could have unintended consequences for social media use.
Bill is ‘not an attempt to ban TikTok’, says Pelosi
Nancy Pelosi has said the bill is “not an attempt to ban TikTok” but rather a move to fix it.
(The bill does not actually ban the app immediately. It requires parent company Bytedance to divest – or face the threat of a ban in six months.)
Data could still be used
Republican representative David Schweikert notes a problem in the ban: the data in TikTok has already been taken. So even if Bytedance divests, that data could be parcelled up, sold and distributed, he warns.
He says that data should be treated as a private property right.
Representative Thomas Massey, opposing the bill, says that the bill’s primary consequence will be in helping Facebook. It’s hard to disagree with this: if you go on Instagram Reels (or YouTube Shorts, or similar) they’re mostly the same content from TikTok.
‘It’s not a ban,’ says Deborah Ross
Deborah Ross, a Democrat from North Carolina, tells The Independent that she voted to support the bill because it’s “not a ban” but rather a “divestment bill”. (If Bytedance divests, then TikTok will stay available.)
‘Protect all of our data’, says Mark Pocan
Mark Pocan, a Democrat from Wisconsin, says that he voted against the bill because it “didn’t make a case”. He said that the classified briefing did not give him a “compelling reason to go after a single social media platform”.
Instead, he said that lawmakers should “go after protecting all of our data with all social media companies”. Without that, the bill is about feeling good rather than doing good, he said.
House votes for TikTok ban
By a huge majority, the House has voted for the bill – which will require that TikTok parent Bytedance divests or the app is banned in the US.
Marjorie Taylor Greene votes against bill
Controversial Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene – the only member of congress to be banned from social media – has voted against the bill.
“I think that it opens up many possibilities could be unintended consequences, or maybe some unintended consequences,” she told The Independent. “This bill is saying that it’s designed to protect people’s data. But if we care about protecting people’s data, then we should protect American citizens universally from every company that is using their data or selling their data.”
“Another issue that I see is this is the same government that worked with big tech and social media companies and censored and banned Americans. So I don’t think this is going to protect Americans at all. And I’m the only member of Congress that actually got banned on Twitter by an American on Twitter. And China didn’t do that to me. So I voted that for those reasons.”
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