The US House of Representatives has approved a bill that would block the short video app TikTok unless the Chinese owner of ByteDance agrees to sell it to a local company.
Source. This was reported by Reuters.
The bill was supported by 352 members of the lower house of Congress, 65 opposed, and one abstained. The document will be sent to the Senate for approval.
After the bill's passage, Democrat Mark Warner and Republican Marco Rubio issued a joint statement saying they were encouraged by the support of both parties for the bill and hoped for support from the Senate. US President Joe Biden has said he plans to sign the bill into law.
According to the congressmen, their offices received a flurry of calls from teenagers asking them not to block the programme. The volume of complaints about the new law exceeds the number of requests to facilitate a truce in the Gaza Strip.
CNN clarifies that if the law comes into force, TikTok will have about five months to distance itself from ByteDance.
"This is a critical national security issue. The Senate must take up this issue and pass it," tweeted Republican Stephen Skelis.
According to a Reuters source, TikTok CEO Shou Ji Chu will visit the US for talks with senators this week.
"This law has a pre-determined outcome: a complete ban on TikTok in the US. The government is trying to deprive 170 million Americans of their constitutional right to freedom of expression," the Chinese company said in a statement.
According to US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, the bill's goal is to end Chinese ownership of the app, not to ban it.
"Do we want TikTok as a platform to be owned by an American company or to be owned by China? Do we want the data of children and adults on TikTok to stay here in America or go to China?" asked Sullivan.
In 2020, then US President Donald Trump tried to ban TikTok and the Chinese mobile communication system WeChat. The District of Columbia Court temporarily banned the US authorities from restricting the operation of Chinese services in the country.
Background. It was also reported that former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick intends to buy TikTok. According to the WSJ, the deal could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.