‘TikTok bill’ that would ban the app passes House vote

The United States House of Representatives has passed the “TikTok bill” that would effectively ban the short-form video-sharing app if owner ByteDance doesn’t divest. Representatives voted on Wednesday on the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, pushing it forward with a majority vote of 352 to 65. The bill is expected to move onto the Senate for another vote if Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer brings it to the floor. President Biden said he’d sign the bill should it reach his desk.

Several legislators spoke for and in opposition of the partisan bill ahead of the vote.

“I’m voting NO on the TikTok forced sale bill,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted to X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday. “This bill was incredibly rushed, from committee to vote in 4 days, with little explanation. There are serious antitrust and privacy questions here, and any national security concerns should be laid out to the public prior to a vote.”

Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) added that the bill could potentially impact “an infinite number of companies.” In opposition, Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio) claimed that ByteDance and TikTok employees are “taking orders” from the Chinese Communist Party. Rep Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal) also urged members to vote yes, while others assured members that the bill will only result in a ban if ByteDance doesn’t sell the app.

The bill was proposed by Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) and the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party in early March. The bill would prohibit ByteDance apps — like TikTok — on U.S. app stores; TikTok can stay, though, if the app “severs ties” to ByteDance, a Chinese company. Crucially, the bill is not limited to ByteDance and TikTok, though it is the app targeted currently; the bill could impact companies, websites, and apps from countries deemed by the government as “foreign adversaries.” If the bill is signed into law, ByteDance would have 165 days to sell the app. A Wall Street Journal report suggested that ex-Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick is looking to purchase TikTok.

The bill would make it illegal to distribute or update said apps and to provide internet hosting to enable distribution and updates. On March 7, the House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously advanced the bill — just two days after it was proposed. That’s when it moved into the House, where, under fast-track rules, it needed a two-thirds majority vote to pass.

Lawmakers describe the bill as a way “to protect national security of the United States from the threat posed by foreign adversary controlled applications.” The FBI and the Federal Communications Commission believe that TikTok owner ByteDance may share TikTok user data with the Chinese government; this speculation is due to a Chinese law that requires companies to provide the government with user data should there be a risk to Chinese national security, the Associated Press reported last year, despite little evidence TikTok has done so. Concern over ByteDance’s reach into U.S. user data has been around for years, but was reunited once again after the company admitted it had fired four employees who collected user data on several journalists.

TikTok itself has been sending push notifications to U.S.-based users, asking them to contact government representatives to prevent a “total ban of TikTok,” according to The Verge. The message has a slot for users to enter their zip code and easily call a representative. A Politico report from Monday suggested thousands of TikTok users have “bombarded” House lawmakers. The effort appears to have failed to sway the House, given the vote Wednesday. TikTok chief executive officer Shou Chew, who testified on behalf of the app to Congress in March 2023, was in Washington, D.C. Tuesday to lobby Senators against the bill. The FBI, the Justice Department, and the Office of the Directors of National Intelligence were also on Capitol Hill Tuesday to brief House members on TikTok, Bloomberg reported.

A separate bipartisan bill, known as the RESTRICT Act, was proposed last year; the legislation never gained enough support to move to a vote, but it spurred Chew’s testimony in Congress. Former President Trump called for a TikTok ban in 2020, but ahead of the vote, changed his tune: Now, Trump opposes the ban because doing so would make Facebook — which he called “an enemy of the people” in a CNBC interview — more powerful. TikTok has since been banned from use by government workers on their work devices; there’s both a federal ban and bans in several local governments. The state of Montana recently banned TikTok as well, but the decision was later blocked by a judge.

The American Civil Liberties Union lobbied against previous bills that would ban TikTok, and has rallied again in advance of the new vote. In a statement from March 5, the ACLU said a TikTok ban “would have profound implications for our constitutional right to free speech and free expression because millions of Americans rely on the app every day for information, communication, advocacy, and entertainment.”

With a two-third majority vote in the House, the bill will now move onto the Senate. Its reception is not nearly as straightforward there; Republican and Democratic senators have expressed concerns over the precision of the bill, which specifically names ByteDance and TikTok. “You don’t want to establish a precedent on naming an individual company,” Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) said Tuesday, according to Axios.