The White House supports the bill and wants it to become law, ByteDance has to sell TikTok or face the ban in the US.
The US House of Representatives recently made a big decision about TikTok. The popular social media app was voted on a bill that says the company that owns TikTok, called ByteDance, has to sell TikTok or it could be banned in the US.
The vote was a big win for the supporters of the bill, with 352 members of Congress voting in favor and only 65 against. This means most people in Congress think ByteDance should sell App.
The bill was quickly approved by a committee last week, and now ByteDance has 165 days to sell Ticktock. If they don’t, the app could be banned from app stores like the Apple App Store and Google Play.
After the vote, the CEO of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, said he was disappointed by the decision and promised that they would do everything they could to protect the app and its users. Chew also mentioned that TikTok has always kept the privacy of its users as a top priority and has invested in keeping the data safe and the platform free from outside influences.
This platform for video content creation has been in trouble before as people doubt that the app could give information to the Chinese government, which is a threat to the entire state. But the authorities of the concerned app say it has never done this and will never do it in the future.
The vote conducted has made people worried that the company, which is based in China, might be collecting information from users, and censoring the content. Bust despite their arguments, TikTok has been facing troubles.
Initially, Former President Donald Trump tried to ban TikTok in 2020, and in 2023, Montana passed a law to ban it too. But both times the court said no because it thought the rule went against people’s right to free speech. In March 2023, a group of foreign investments in the US told ByteDance, TikTok’s owner to sell their shares or risk a ban, yet nothing happened.
Before the vote, a spokesperson from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the US was being unfair to TikTok. They said the US doesn’t have any proof to stand by their claims but still keeps going after it anyway.
Some people in the US government say that the entertainment App is a threat to national security and want to get rid of it. But others say banning TikTok would be unfair and would hurt a lot of people who are using the app.
The bill still needs to be approved by the Senate before it becomes law. Some senators are worried that banning TikTok would go against free speech. They want to find other ways to make sure social media is safe without banning TikTok specifically.
The White House supports the bill and wants it to become law. They say it’s important to protect people’s information and keep the country safe.
The producers of the bill say it’s not a ban because it gives ByteDance a chance to sell TikTok and avoid being banned in the US, to which TikTok disagrees. They say the bill is like a ban because it’s forcing them to sell, and they think it’s not fair and warn that the bill will hurt millions of people who use TikTok for their jobs and hobbies.
After the committee voted on the bill, people who supported called their representatives in Congress to complain. ByteDance says this is normal and that Congress should listen to what people have to say.
Even though the bill is mainly about a particular app, it could also affect other apps owned by Chinese companies. This includes WeChat, another popular app that was banned by former President Trump. However, the decision is big and will have an effect on the youth and the entire social media in the US.