The Senate approved legislation on Tuesday night that would force TikTok's China-based parent company to sell the social media platform under threat of a ban, a controversial move by US lawmakers that is expected to face legal challenges and disrupt life of content creators who rely on the short form video app for income.
The TikTok legislation was included as part of a larger $95 billion package providing foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel and passed 79-18. It now goes to President Joe Biden, who said in a statement shortly after the vote that he would sign it Wednesday.
A decision by House Republicans last week to attach the TikTok bill to the high-priority package helped speed its passage in Congress and came after negotiations with the Senate, where an earlier version of the bill had stalled. That release had given TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, six months to divest its stake in the platform. But it drew skepticism from some key lawmakers who worried there was no window for a complex deal that could be worth tens of billions of dollars.
The revised legislation extends the deadline, giving ByteDance nine months to sell TikTok and a possible three-month extension if the sale goes ahead. The bill would also bar the company from controlling TikTok's secret sauce: the algorithm that feeds users videos based on their interests and has made the platform a trending phenomenon.
TikTok did not immediately return a request for comment Tuesday night.
The legislation's passage is the culmination of longstanding bipartisan fears in Washington about Chinese threats and ownership of TikTok, which is used by 170 million Americans. For years, lawmakers and administration officials have raised concerns that Chinese authorities could force ByteDance to hand over US user data or influence Americans by suppressing or promoting certain content on TikTok.
“Congress is not acting to punish ByteDance, TikTok or any other individual company,” said Senate Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell. “Congress is acting to prevent foreign adversaries from conducting espionage, surveillance, malicious operations, harming vulnerable Americans, our servicemen and women, and US government personnel.”
Opponents of the bill say the Chinese government could easily obtain information about Americans in other ways, including through commercial data brokers who traffic in personal information. The foreign aid package includes a provision that makes it illegal for data brokers to sell or rent “personally sensitive data” to North Korea, China, Russia, Iran or entities in those countries. But it has faced some pushback, including from the American Civil Liberties Union, which says the language is written too broadly and could sweep journalists and others who publish personal information.
Many opponents of the TikTok measure argue that the best way to protect US consumers is to implement a comprehensive federal data privacy law that targets all companies regardless of their origin. They also note that the US has not provided public evidence showing that TikTok has shared US user information with Chinese authorities or that Chinese officials have ever tampered with its algorithm.
“Banning TikTok would be an extraordinary step that requires extraordinary justification,” said Becca Branum, associate director at the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Technology, which advocates for digital rights. “Extending the divestment deadline does not justify the urgency of the threat to the public or address the fundamental constitutional flaws in the legislation.”
Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat who voted for the legislation, said he was concerned about TikTok, but also worried the bill could have a negative impact on free speech, doesn't do enough to protect consumer privacy and might be abused by a future administration to violate First Amendment rights.
“I plan to watch how this legislation is implemented,” Wyden said in a statement.
China has previously said it would oppose a forced sale of TikTok and has signaled its opposition this time. TikTok, which has long denied it poses a security threat, is also preparing a lawsuit to block the legislation.
“At the stage where the bill is signed, we will move to court for a legal challenge,” Michael Beckerman, TikTok's head of public policy for the Americas, wrote in a memo sent to employees Saturday and obtained by The Associated Press.
“This is the beginning, not the end, of this long process,” Beckerman wrote.
The company has had some success with court challenges in the past, but has never sought to prevent the federal law from applying.
In November, a federal judge blocked a Montana law that would have banned the use of TikTok statewide after the company and five content creators who use the platform sued. Three years before that, federal courts blocked an executive order issued by then-President Donald Trump to ban TikTok after the company sued on the grounds that the order violated free speech and due process rights.
The Trump administration then brokered a deal that saw US companies Oracle and Walmart take a large stake in TikTok. But the sale never went through.
Trump, who is running for president again this year, now says he opposes the potential ban.
Since then, TikTok has been in negotiations over its future with the secretive Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a little-known government agency tasked with investigating corporate deals on national security issues.
On Sunday, Erich Andersen, ByteDance's top lawyer who has led talks with the US government for years, told his team he was stepping down from his role.
“As I began to reflect a few months ago on the pressures of the past few years and the new generation of challenges ahead, I decided the time was right to pass the baton to a new leader,” Andersen wrote in an internal memo. which secured the AP. He said the decision to step down was solely his and was decided months ago in a discussion with senior executives at the company.
Meanwhile, TikTok content creators who rely on the app are trying to make their voices heard. Earlier Tuesday, some creators gathered in front of the Capitol to speak out against the bill and carry signs that read, among other things, “I'm one of the 170 million Americans on TikTok.”
Tiffany Cianci, a content creator who has more than 140,000 followers on the platform and had been encouraging people to come forward, said she spent Monday night picking up creators from airports in the D.C. area. Some came from Nevada and California. Others drove overnight from South Carolina or took a bus from upstate New York.
Cianci says she believes TikTok is the safest platform for users right now because of Project Texas, TikTok's $1.5 billion mitigation plan to store US user data on servers owned and maintained by the tech giant. giant Oracle.
“If our data is not safe on TikTok,” he said. “I would ask why the president is on TikTok.”
