Kathmandu. The US Senate on Tuesday approved legislation to separate the Chinese app TikTok from its Chinese parent company ByteDance or shut it down from the US market.
The move was part of a $95 billion foreign aid package that also included military aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. It has now been approved by Congress and is on its way to President Joe Biden’s desk for approval.
The US and other Western officials have expressed concern about TikTok’s popularity among young people, accusing it of allowing Beijing to collect data and spy on users. It has 170 million users in the US alone.
Critics say TikTok is controlled by Beijing and is a vehicle for spreading disinformation. China and the company have strongly denied those claims. The bill, which would take rare steps to block any company from operating in the US market, was passed by the Senate by a vote of 79 to 18 three days after the House of Representatives passed it with strong bipartisan support.
President Biden has said he will sign the legislation. He reiterated his concerns about TikTok in a rare phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this month. TikTok complained after the House vote on Saturday that it was “unfortunate” that lawmakers were trying to block a ban bill that would trample on the free speech of 170 million Americans, destroy 7 million businesses and shut down the platform, which contributes $24 billion annually to the US economy.
The bill would require ByteDance to sell its app within a year or be removed from Apple and Google’s app stores in the US. Steven Mnuchin, who served as US Treasury secretary under former President Donald Trump, has rallied a group of investors to say he is interested in acquiring TikTok.
TikTok has been a target of US authorities for years. Officials say the platform allows Beijing to spy on its users in the US. However, the ban could lead to lawsuits. The bill passed by Congress gives the US president the authority to designate other applications as a threat to national security if they are controlled by a country deemed an enemy.
Billionaire Elon Musk, the owner of the social network X, protested the ban on TikTok on Friday, saying, “Doing so would be contrary to freedom of speech and expression.”
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