The U.S. Senate approved a bill late Tuesday night that could see TikTok banned in America over national security fears.
It gives TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, nine months to sell its stake or the app will be blocked in the United States.
Driven by widespread worries among U.S. lawmakers that China could access Americans’ data or surveil them with the app, the bill was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Saturday, as Breitbart News reported.
Wake up, America. Communist China’s TikTok is taking over. https://t.co/JzS3l0i1Co
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) September 7, 2021
The bill now heads to President Joe Biden, who has said he will sign it into law as soon as it reaches his desk on Wednesday.
TikTok has not issued an immediate response to the move.
Previously, Bytedance said it would oppose any push to force it to sell the popular short video app.
“It’s a big deal”, Doug Calidas, a tech expert at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, told the BBC.
An inquiry into TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance found that employees of the company obtained the private user data of two U.S. journalists. https://t.co/rJu1ywUyim
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) December 24, 2022
“In the period of a few weeks they managed to pass a law through both chambers which very rarely happens – to see them act so quickly on a matter of public concern.”
If the U.S. is successful in forcing ByteDance to sell TikTok, any deal would still need approval from Chinese officials – but China has vowed to oppose any such move.
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