TikTok Ban: US Senate Bill Sparks Concerns

The United States Senate has passed a bill that has the potential to either prohibit the social media app TikTok entirely or force its Chinese owner to sell it. This development highlights the ongoing tensions that exist between the United States and China, which are occurring in the midst of backchannel negotiations to improve diplomatic relations.

The Senate approved the measure on Tuesday (April 23)  with a vote of 79-18, which is just the beginning of the process for ByteDance to sell TikTok in order to avoid the ban. After an unsuccessful lobbying campaign, TikTok is anticipated to take legal action in a bid to halt the law.

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Where Does TikTok Get From Here?

TikTok’s ties to China were cited as the reason for the measure’s passage by the United States Senate, which cited worries about national security. There is a widespread fear that the Chinese government could coerce local enterprises such as Bytedance into divulging sensitive personal information of more than 170 million American customers or that this information could be exploited to propagate propaganda that is favorable to China. The government is concerned about this possibility.

Professionals, on the other hand, are of the opinion that the path ahead from this point might be littered with legal proceedings over the proposal, and they also anticipate that Beijing will take retaliatory actions in the event that the Bill is passed into law.

Congress is acting to prevent foreign adversaries from conducting espionage, surveillance blind operations, harming vulnerable Americans our servicemen and women and our US government personnel, explained Maria Cantwell, the Democratic head of the commerce committee.

In addition, senators asked younger Americans to comprehend that Congress was not attempting to prohibit the widely used app, but rather, they were attempting to safeguard them.

TikTok and the US experienced something similar in the past, during the time that former President Donald Trump was in office. There was a strong push that took place during his administration with the intention of compelling Bytedance to sell TikTok’s American business to a corporation based in the United States.