Some key excerpts:
The House on Wednesday passed a bill that would lead to a nationwide ban of the popular video app TikTok if its China-based owner doesn’t sell, as lawmakers acted on concerns that the company’s current ownership structure is a national security threat.
The bill, passed by a vote of 352-65, now goes to the Senate, where its prospects are unclear.
The lawmakers contend that ByteDance is beholden to the Chinese government, which could demand access to the data of TikTok’s consumers in the U.S. any time it wants. The worry stems from a set of Chinese national security laws that compel organizations to assist with intelligence gathering.
House passage of the bill is only the first step. The Senate would also need to pass the measure for it to become law, and lawmakers in that chamber indicated it would undergo a thorough review. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he’ll have to consult with relevant committee chairs to determine the bill’s path.
Opposition to the bill was also bipartisan. Some Republicans said the U.S. should warn consumers if there are data privacy and propaganda concerns, while some Democrats voiced concerns about the impact a ban would have on its millions of users in the U.S., many of which are entrepreneurs and business owners.
TikTok has long denied that it could be used as a tool of the Chinese government. The company has said it has never shared U.S. user data with Chinese authorities and won’t do so if it is asked. To date, the U.S. government also has not provided any evidence that shows TikTok shared such information with Chinese authorities. The platform has about 170 million users in the U.S.
Republican leaders have moved quickly to bring up the bill after its introduction last week. A House committee approved the legislation unanimously, on a 50-vote, even after their offices were inundated with calls from TikTok users demanding they drop the effort. Some offices even shut off their phones because of the onslaught.
As president, Trump attempted to ban TikTok through an executive order that called “the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in the People’s Republic of China (China)” a threat to “the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States.” The courts, however, blocked the action after TikTok sued, arguing such actions would violate free speech and due process rights.
I’ve read through the bill, and I have to preface this by saying that I’m not a lawyer and am unaware of certain intended implications of the language of this bill, but it doesn’t seem to do anything about any of the issues congress people are saying they support the bill for unless this bill causes Tiktok to quickly collapse in the short term. It doesn’t ban Tiktok.
The only thing the bill does is make it impossible for Tiktok to legitimately participate in the US domestic market. It does absolutely nothing about limiting access to the app other than to remove it from US marketplaces such as the official smartphone stores most people with a smartphone have access to. There is no language making reference to taking any measures to prohibit a consumer from downloading and using tiktok if they decide to download the free app in any number of ways hosted outside of the US domestic market. The bill has no language criminalizing or disincentivizing in any way the use of this app by any US citizen. The only possible consequences are against Bytedance.
Absurdly, this bill makes Tiktok impossible to regulate. Since Tiktok would be barred entirely from the US domestic market, there is absolutely no enforceable consequences for the willful violation in any way of the spirit of the law. If this bill passes all it would do is drive tiktok barely underground since it would continue to be very easy to access and they would have no incentive whatsoever to limit this access and every incentive to make it easier to access outside of US channels. You can’t impose a civil penalty on a foreign company which is not even allowed to participate in the market at all; if they ignore any consequences for being found in violation of this law nothing can happen if they don’t pay the fine. The nuclear option already took place, there’s no longer a possibility for a well-regulated relationship practiced in good faith. There are ways other than through official US channels to profit from US consumers, and with this bill there would be no possible way to participate in US markets legitimately. Any economic activity associated with Tiktok will now take place outside of US channels which are accessible to all easily due to the nature of the internet. This could very well necessitate the creation of infrastructure to circumvent the US market seamlessly on a typical consumer level. Laws against this would be laws inhibiting free international trade which would involve possibly risking the interests of our own capitalists, so they would be much much harder to get through in our current system.
With this law Tiktok would be almost as easy as ever for anyone to access and without any ability at all for the US to regulate them. The consequence of this bill would be that Bytedance no longer has any obligations toward the US government while still being desired by US consumers and easily accessible to them. That to me seems like a far riskier situation for US interests than the one we’re supposedly “solving” with this bill.