The House Approves the Bill To Force the Sale of TikTok as China Terms It a “Bullying Behavior,” Elon Musk Raises Censorship Concerns, and Trump Mulls Over the Competitive Advantage to Meta

13.03.2024 - 15:45 / wccftech.com / Rohail Saleem

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Rarely has a bill that enjoys bipartisan support in the US Congress proven to be so divisive, eliciting a gamut of differing opinions from the various stakeholders. Yet, this is exactly what appears to be happening in relation to the so-called TikTok bill.

To wit, just moments ago, the House approved the TikTok bill, which aims to force the social media platform's owner - ByteDance - to either divest its stake in the company within 180 days in favor of an entity that is acceptable to the US administration or face comprehensive restrictions, including preventing the app stores and cloud service providers from updating the TikTok app in the United States. The bill also empowers the US Department of Justice to introduce appropriate sanctions against individuals and entities who violate the bill's demands.

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The Resolution HR 7521, which includes the TikTok bill, has received 352 votes in favor and 65 votes in opposition.

Of course, the TikTok bill now moves to the Senate, where Senator Rand Paul has already pledged to block the legislation as potentially violative of the Constitution.

Do note that a large segment of US lawmakers are concerned about the data security of Americans. Under the prevailing law, ByteDance can be compelled by the Chinese authorities to potentially hand over the data of millions of Americans who use TikTok every day. For its part, TikTok says that it has already spent over $1 billion to store the user data of Americans on American soil by leveraging Oracle's data centers.

Meanwhile, China, where ByteDance is domiciled, has been quite vocal in expressing its reservations vis-a-vis the TikTok bill. Recently, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson termed the legislative action as a "kind of bullying behavior [that] is used when one can no longer win in fair competition."

Bear in mind that it remains uncertain whether China will even allow ByteDance to divest. Back in 2020, Beijing had placed export restrictions on technology related to TikTok's content-recommending algorithms.

Elon Musk has already expressed his opposition to the TikTok bill, taking exception to the potential for executive misuse of authority in pursuit of undue censorship.

Trump has also expressed qualified reservations with the TikTok bill as he thinks it would give Meta an undue advantage.

Yet, there remains a slim window of opportunity for ByteDance to achieve an amicable resolution to this crisis of sorts. Rumble has proposed a consortium to acquire TikTok. This might be the only recourse