The US House of Representatives officially passed a bill that would force ByteDance, the owner of the popular social media app, TikTok, to divest its ownership or prepare to be banned in the US. The bill was to an overwhelming majority vote on the house floor, and will now need to get that same approval from the Senate.
The bill, also known as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, received 352 votes in its favour, and only 65 against. Per previous reports, many legislators on the floor argued that TikTok would allow the Chinese government to access the personal data of American citizens and their habits, all through the app’s special algorithm. Even sitting US President Joe Biden publicly backed the bill, saying that he would sign it if it passes Congress, despite ByteDance categorically denying that its social media app does not collect or share personal data with the Chinese government.
The fact that Presiden Biden would support the bill is, in a sense, a clear definition of ironic: Just a month ago, the President’s reelection campaign joined TikTok. In other words, this could cost him and his reelection campaign a platform that would otherwise allow them to reach younger voters in the US.
China, to no one’s surprise, isn’t happy with the US bill being passed on TikTok, accusing its economic rival of applying a “bandit” mentality to its actions, and that it will be taking “necessary measures” to the situation. It is yet another ironic situation for China, given what they are doing and have done to other US-based companies in the past.
One example would be Google back in 2010, when it pulled out from the mainland after operating there for four years. The search engine said then that it was no longer willing to continue censoring results on Google.cn. One such example was the censoring of all information about the Tiananmen Square massacre of 6 June 1989, when the Chinese Communist Party suppressed pro-democracy protestors.
Even US Ambassador Nicholas Burns called out China’s hypocrisy on the TikTok issue, saying that the country’s Communist government has blocked several other Western platforms from operating in their country. Besides Google, that also includes YouTube, X, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook. “They won’t even let TikTok be available to 1.4 billion Chinese,” he said. Regarding the last point, ByteDance runs a separate version of its popular app inside China, called Douyin.
(Source: BBC, CNA, Al-Jazeera, CNN, FMT)
