The legislation would force TikTok’s Chinese parent company to sell the popular app or be banned in the U.S. The bill was included as part of a foreign aid package that the House passed in. The House has already approved similar legislation, but the new language extended the timeline for ByteDance to sell TikTok from six months to roughly a year. This change moved Senate Commerce Committee Chair (D-Wash.) to support the bill.
The House passed the foreign aid package as a four-point bill that was sent to the Senate as one measure. It also included long-sought aid to Ukraine and Israel. There may be pressure on senators not to divide up the package. has already signaled his support for the overall measure and the TikTok provisions.
Despite those negative signs, TikTok, its impassioned users, and some lawmakers appear ready to fight against the ban. “I think if anything people are pissed,” TikTok user and small business owner Nadya Okamoto told The Hill Friday. Okamoto is the co-founder of period care brand August and a TikTok creator with over 2.5 million followers. She led an open letter signed by other TikTok creators addressed to Biden earlier this week urging him to oppose the legislation.
Okamoto believes the pressure campaign is still growing and that people are still reacting to how swiftly the new threat to the social media platform came into being. After the new legislation was put out this week, there was a sense of “‘Oh, shit, we have to take this seriously and we need to activate” within the TikTok community, she said.
