WASHINGTON.- The US House of Representatives examines this Wednesday a bill to prohibit the use of the social network Tik Tok unless it cuts relations with its parent company ByteDance and in general with China.
The legislative initiative is so far the biggest threat facing the video-sharing application, which is very popular around the world, especially among young people.
Because it has a Chinese parent company, Tik Tok is a concern for the United States and other countries, which consider that the platform allows Beijing to spy on and manipulate some 170 million users in the United States.
Overwhelming support for this project is expected, in a rare moment of agreement between Democrats and the Republican opposition in a politically divided Washington.
However, its fate in the Senate is uncertain, as key figures oppose taking such a drastic measure against the popular application.
President Joe Biden will promulgate the rule, officially known as the “Protecting Americans from Requests Controlled by Foreign Rivals Act,” once it is approved in both legislative chambers, the White House has already announced.
The law would require TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app within 180 days to a local company or else it will be excluded from the stores of giants Apple and Google in the United States.
It would also give the president power to designate other apps as a national security threat if they are under the control of a country considered an adversary of the United States.
The resurgence of Washington’s campaign against TikTok came as a surprise to the company, The Wall Street Journal reported, and TikTok executives were reassured when Biden joined the social network last month as part of his campaign to win a second term in the elections next November.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is in Washington aiming to drum up support to stop the bill.
“This latest legislation, passed at unprecedented speed, without even the benefit of a public hearing, raises serious constitutional concerns,” Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s vice president of public policy, wrote in a letter to the bill’s cosponsors to which the AFP had access to.
No evidence
The promoters of the text, both from the House of Representatives, Republican Mike Gallagher and Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi, as well as the White House, argue that the bill is not a ban on Tiktok, as long as the company disassociates itself from ByteDance .
China warned Wednesday that the move would “inevitably turn against the United States.”
“Although the United States has never found evidence that TikTok threatens American national security, it has not stopped suppressing it,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, condemning it as “bullying behavior.”
In a change from his previous stance, former President (2017-2021) Donald Trump said on Monday that he is against a ban on TikTok, mainly because it would strengthen the American group Meta, the owner of the social networks Instagram and Facebook , whom he called “enemies of the people.”
When Trump was president, he tried to wrest control of Tiktok from ByteDance, but was blocked by US courts.
Other efforts to ban TikTok have also failed: A bill proposed a year ago failed largely due to concerns that it constituted a threat to free speech.
Source: With information from AP