{"id":4513,"date":"2024-03-15T18:42:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-15T18:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/tiktok-owners-have-been-warned-that-they-will-need-to-sell-the-app-or-face-being-banned-in-the-us\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T05:23:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T05:23:10","slug":"tiktok-owners-have-been-warned-that-they-will-need-to-sell-the-app-or-face-being-banned-in-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/tiktok-owners-have-been-warned-that-they-will-need-to-sell-the-app-or-face-being-banned-in-the-us\/","title":{"rendered":"TikTok Owners Have Been Warned That They Will Need to Sell\u00a0the App or Face Being Banned in the US\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The owners of TikTok will need to sell the social media platform or face a total ban in the United States, following a landslide vote in the House of Representatives.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0
The move follows a campaign by Congressman Mike Gallagher, the lead sponsor of the bill, who argued he did not want to \u201ccensor speech\u201d but insisted there was a need to ban the app because it\u2019s \u201cbecoming the dominant news platform for Americans under 30\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Congressman Gallagher, the Republican chairman of the House select China committee, and the bill\u2019s co-author Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, the panel\u2019s top Democrat, introduced legislation to address national security concerns posed by Chinese ownership of the app.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The two politicians argued that the bill\u2019s success does not constitute a ban because \u00a0ByteDance can sell TikTok and avoid being blocked in the US.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cTikTok could live on, and people could do whatever they want on it provided there is that separation,\u201d Gallagher said, urging US ByteDance investors to support a sale. \u201cIt is not a ban \u2013 think of this as a surgery designed to remove the tumour and thereby save the patient in the process.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0
The vote was a landslide, with 352 Congress members voting in favour and only 65 against. The bill, which was fast-tracked to a vote after being unanimously approved by a committee last week, gives China-based ByteDance 165 days to divest from TikTok.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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If it did not, app stores including the Apple App store and Google Play would be legally barred from hosting TikTok or providing web hosting services to ByteDance-controlled applications.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0
Shortly after the vote, TikTok\u2019s chief executive, Shou Zi Chew, said the vote was \u201cdisappointing\u201d and that the company would do \u201call we can\u201d to protect the platform, including \u201cexercising legal rights\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0
Chew said TikTok had invested to keep data safe and the platform free from outside influences.\u00a0
He added: \u201cThis bill gives more power to a handful of other social media companies, who will also take billions of dollars out of the pockets of creators and small businesses,\u201d he said in a video message. \u201cIt will put more than 300,000 American jobs at risk and will take away your TikTok.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The vote in the House represents the most concrete threat to TikTok in an ongoing political battle over allegations the China-based company could collect sensitive user data and politically censor content.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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TikTok has repeatedly stated it has not and would not share US user data with the Chinese government.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Prior to the vote, China\u2019s ministry of foreign affairs spokesman, Wang Wenbin, accused the US of \u201chegemonic\u201d practices, \u201cwhen one could not succeed in fair competition\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0
\u201cIn recent years, though the US has never found any evidence of TikTok posing a threat to the US\u2019s national security, it has never stopped going after TikTok,\u201d he told a regular press briefing on Wednesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0
TikTok, which has 170 million users in the US, has argued otherwise, stating that it is not clear if China would approve any sale, or that it could be divested in six months.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis legislation has a predetermined outcome: a total ban of TikTok in the United States,\u201d the company said after the committee vote. \u201cThe government is attempting to strip 170 million Americans of their constitutional right to free expression. This will damage millions of businesses, deny artists an audience, and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0
Following the committee\u2019s passage of the bill, staffers complained that TikTok supporters had flooded Congress with phone calls, after the app pushed out a notification urging users to oppose the legislation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhy are Members of Congress complaining about hearing from their constituents? Respectfully, isn\u2019t that their job?\u201d TikTok said on X.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0
Although the bill was written with TikTok in mind, it is possible other China-owned platforms could be affected, including US operations of Tencent\u2019s WeChat, which President Donald Trump also sought to ban in 2020. Gallagher said he would not speculate on what other impacts the bill could have, but said \u201cgoing forward we can debate what companies fall\u201d under the bill.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The owners of TikTok will need to sell the social media platform or face a total ban in the United States, following a landslide vote in the House of Representatives.\u00a0 \u00a0The move follows a campaign by Congressman Mike Gallagher, the lead sponsor of the bill, who argued he did not want to \u201ccensor speech\u201d but<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4514,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4513","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-africa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4513"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4515,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4513\/revisions\/4515"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}