U.S. Lawmakers Pass Bill That Could Ban TikTok in the U.S.

The US House passed a bill to ban TikTok in the United States on 13th March. The ban on the popular short video content platform comes over growing security concerns and President  Biden says he will sign the bill once Congress passes it.

In March 2024, the House Energy and Commerce Committee introduced a bill calling for TikTok to disassociate itself from its parent company, ByteDance, within six months or face a ban in the United States. The legislation, which is called the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act”, actually wants ByteDance to transfer ownership of TikTok to non-Chinese owners.

This is not the first time legislators or government authorities in the US have moved to control the operation of TikTok in the country. In February 2023, The White House mandated federal agencies to delete the app from government devices within 30 days.

In 2020, Former President Trump tried to remove TikTok from app stores and also called on ByteDance to divest the app, citing national security concerns. This was stopped by the courts. Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a bill to ban TikTok from operating inside the state, but a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction to stop the ban.

Various cities, state governments, and colleges have also barred access to the app, preventing their workers from downloading it on app stores or using it over their WiFi.

But why so much pressure on TikTok?

It’s all about ByteDance’s relationship with the Chinese government. According to the New York Times, US lawmakers have pointed to Chinese laws that allow China to secretly collect data from Chinese companies and citizens for intelligence-gathering operations.

To make matters worse, TikTok has confirmed that some of the user data it collects is stored with its parent company in China. It was for this same reason that India implemented a nationwide ban on TikTok and several other Chinese-owned apps in mid-2020.

Critics are also worried that China could use TikTok’s content recommendations to push misinformation to its US audience. But, the biggest concern is whether the US government should have the power to ban an app that Americans use to share their views, promote their businesses, and create daily discussions.

Speaking with the New York Times, Caitlin Chin, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that “such legislation could face legal challenges on First Amendment grounds”.