US House to vote Wednesday on TikTok crackdown
STORY: A U.S. bill to crack down on TikTok is set for a vote in the House of Representatives on Wednesday.
Lawmakers from both major parties say the app poses a national security threat.
If passed, the bill would give the short-video app’s Chinese owner ByteDance about six months to divest, or face a nationwide ban.
TikTok says it has not and would not share U.S. user data with the Chinese government.
The app says it’s not clear whether Beijing would approve any divestment - which the company needs in order to make it happen - or whether it could even be done within six months.
In a statement, the company said, "This legislation has a predetermined outcome: a total ban of TikTok in the United States," adding that the bill was an attempt to strip Americans’ first amendment rights.
“Not only am I a ‘no’ on tomorrow's TikTok ban bill, but I'm a ‘hell no.'"
Democratic Representative Maxwell Frost was one of four lawmakers that held a press conference on Tuesday opposing the bill.
However, he expects the bill to pass in the Republican-led House.
“I am highly concerned about our data being collective and being misused by both foreign adversaries and also domestic companies. But this bill does not fix that problem.”
The fate of the legislation remains uncertain in the Senate, where some senators want to take a different approach.
Still, President Joe Biden said last week that he would sign the bill if it clears both chambers.
Casey Fiesler, an information science professor at the University of Colorado, and herself an avid user of TikTok, questions whether the focus on the app is obscuring the bigger picture regarding data privacy and potential manipulation in the industry.
"If TikTok is able to divest from China, if it is, for example, purchased by an American tech company, I would just still like to see some meaningful regulation because I have similar concerns with American tech companies that I have with TikTok... The thing that I think is really important here is that we think about how to mitigate some of these problems and risks without completely undermining the good things, which of course is what would happen if the platform were just entirely banned."
The House vote on Wednesday is under fast-track rules that require support by two-thirds of House members for the measure to pass.
The bill would give ByteDance 165 days to divest TikTok.
If it fails to do that, app stores operated by Apple, Google and others could not legally offer TikTok or provide web hosting services to apps controlled by ByteDance.
