The Senate has passed a bill that will ban TikTok in the United States unless its owner, ByteDance, sells the app within a year. The bill was included in a foreign aid package and passed the Senate by a vote of 79-18.
President Joe Biden is expected to sign the bill into law.
TikTok has said it plans to challenge the ban in court.
The bill gives ByteDance nine months to force a sale with a 90-day extension — so effectively a year to complete the deal.
Last week, when the House passed the bill, TikTok said it was “unfortunate” that the House was using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance to jam through a ban bill that restricts the “free speech rights of 170 million Americans.”
While TikTok operates out of Singapore, the U.S. has been concerned about the data of its citizens, given the Chinese ownership of the social media platform.
TikTok has continually tried to assure the government that it doesn’t give out U.S. user data to China with different campaigns.
