The House of Representatives has passed a landmark bill that could see TikTok banned in America.
The bill would give the social media giant’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, six months to sell its controlling stake or the app will be blocked in the US.
While the bill passed overwhelmingly in a bipartisan vote, it still needs to clear the Senate and be signed by the president to become law.
Lawmakers have long held concerns about China’s influence over TikTok.
TikTok is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, which is subject to a national security law requiring it to share data with Chinese officials.
Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican who co-authored the bill, said the US could not “take the risk of having a dominant news platform in America controlled or owned by a company that is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party”.
TikTok has tried to reassure regulators that it has taken steps to ensure the data of its 150 million users in the US has been walled off from ByteDance employees in China.
However, an investigation by the Wall Street Journal in January found the system was still “porous”, with data being unofficially shared between TikTok in the US and ByteDance in China. High-profile cases, including one incident where ByteDance employees in China accessed a journalist’s data to track down their sources, have stoked concerns.
After the vote on March 13, a spokesperson for the company accused lawmakers of jamming through a “ban” following what they called a “secret” process.
Speaking ahead of the vote, Hakeem Jeffries – the top Democrat in the House – welcomed the bill, saying it would decrease “the likelihood that TikTok user data is exploited and privacy undermined by a hostile foreign adversary”.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the chamber would now review the legislation.
Its prospects in the upper chamber of Congress are unclear in the wake of Republican White House candidate Donald Trump speaking out against the bill.
Donald Trump, who tried to ban the app during his term in office, changed his position after a recent meeting with Republican donor Jeff Yass, who reportedly owns a minor stake in ByteDance.
Trump’s opposition was echoed by some House members on March 13. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, wrote on social media that the bill could allow Congress to force the sale of other corporations by claiming to be protecting US data from foreign adversaries.
Some Democrats are also opposed to a ban, fearing it could alienate the app’s youthful userbase as the party struggles to retain its hold over younger voters.
