At a margin of 360 to 58, the House of Representatives have passed a bill that would ban the popular social media app TikTok in the United States if the Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell its stake within the year. As a result the bill is on its was to the Senate, were the vote will likely occur in the days ahead. President Biden alrady stated that he would sign such a bill back in March if it came across his desk.
Part of the major reasoning behind the bill is that American politicans in both the Republican and Democratic parties are concerned that the private data of some 170 million US users could be forcibly accessed by the Chinese government. Such a significant security concern has been downplayed by TikTok itself, which insists that it has never shared data from US users and never would do so.
Despite the stated intentions of TikTok, the fact remains that ByteDance, much like all technology companies doing business in China, is still subject to Chinese laws that require any companies operating in the country to turn over user data whenever asked to do so by the Chinese government. Indeed, TikTok has already admitted that employees in China had accessed the data of a few US journalists in 2022. The US is not acting alone either, as at least 15 countries have acted to partially or completely ban the app in their territories as of 2022 and 2023. It might possibly be the case that the US will join this number by 2025.