The United States Senate has approved legislation that would ban the popular video-sharing app TikTok unless it divests from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. The vote on Tuesday clears the way for the bill to be signed into law by President Joe Biden, who has backed the measures, although the legislation is expected to be challenged in the courts.
The proposal, which would give ByteDance nine months to sell the platform, was included in a larger $95 billion package that provides foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel. The Senate voted 79-18 to approve the package, after Republicans in the House of Representatives last week attached the TikTok bill to the foreign aid proposals to help expedite its passage through Congress. The House passed the package on Saturday in a 360-58 bipartisan vote.
Both Republicans and Democrats have claimed that TikTok threatens national security, arguing that the platform could be used by Beijing to spy on Americans and manipulate public debate. TikTok has insisted that it has not shared American users’ data with the Chinese government and that it never would.
In a statement on Sunday, TikTok said that the bill to force its sale “would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans.” TikTok is expected to seek a preliminary injunction to prevent the enforcement of the law pending a challenge to its constitutionality.
Last year, a judge in the US state of Montana blocked a similar ban after finding it “oversteps state power” and “likely violates the First Amendment.” Civil liberties organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, have also opposed the proposals on free speech grounds.
