US Senate Approves TikTok Sell-off Proposal

UPDATE: President Biden has now signed the bill into law.  

Bad news for TikTok fans, with the U.S. Senate today approving a bill that will force the app to be sold into U.S. ownership, or be banned entirely in the region.

The bill, which was initially proposed early last month, and approved by the House of Representatives, was this week repackaged it into a broader foreign aid push, in order to hasten its path to a Senate vote. The Senate today voted on that combined proposal, which also includes provisions for military aid in Ukraine and Israel, and humanitarian aid in Gaza.

The final vote on the bill was 79 to 18 in favor.

That means that the TikTok ban will now be passed on to U.S. President Joe Biden for his approval, and Biden has already stated that he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk.

Which is expected to happen tomorrow, meaning that TikTok will be forced into a sale, in order to distance itself from its Chinese ownership, and the risk of the app being used as a propaganda tool by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

That’s seemingly the primary concern among U.S. officials, with the secondary issue being the transfer of U.S. user data back to China, which is, reportedly, still happening, despite TikTok’s assurances that it’s a wholly separate entity. But clearly, the company’s pledges and commitments were not enough, which also included a billion dollar plan to move all U.S. user data to an American-based data center.

Despite this, TikTok is now going to be forced into a sell-off either way.

It’s difficult to assess the full scope of risk in this case, because while U.S. Senators have been briefed on the matter by various cybersecurity experts, not a lot has been shared with the public as to the specifics of how TikTok could be used as a vector for Chinese influence.

The main impetus of the bill is to address concerns around the “potential influence of foreign adversaries on the American public”. With U.S./China tensions increasing on several fronts, the primary point of contention here is that TikTok, theoretically or not, could be used as a propaganda tool to influence U.S. voters, based on the history of Chinese influence operations more broadly, and on TikTok’s own direct links to the CCP.

In China, for example, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance works closely with the Chinese government on content controls and regulations. And while those controls don’t expand to TikTok, which only operates outside of China itself, again, the history of Chinese influence operations in other nations does suggest that TikTok could be a target for the same.

In 2022, for example, Google disrupted over 50,000 instances of a Chinese influence program called “Dragonbridge” across YouTube, Blogger, and AdSense, while Meta has also detected many instances of Chinese influence operations, with the company removing almost 5,000 Facebook profiles linked to one such program in Q3 alone last year. More recently, Microsoft warned that it’s found various Chinese-based groups seeking to influence voters in other nations, including the U.S., through coordinated social media activity.

Factoring in all of this, TikTok does seem to potentially pose a threat, and U.S. Senators have decided that enough is enough, and that TikTok is too much of a risk to allow, as it currently stands, in the U.S.

So what happens now?

Assuming that Biden does sign the bill as he’s pledged, ByteDance will then be given 9 months to sell TikTok to a U.S.-based owner, or it will have to remove the app from the region.

That could be extended by a further 30 days if ByteDance meets the requirements of an appeal, so essentially, TikTok will likely be around till this time next year, at the least, before it could possibly be gone entirely.

And you would assume that, within this time, the parties involved would be able to reach an agreement to keep the platform running, though a complication could be that the Chinese government has vowed to oppose the forced sell-off, as it would rather see it banned than bow to what it sees as an overreach.

So maybe, political wrangling could see TikTok actually banned for good. Or it could be sold off to an interested party who may keep it going, in isolation from its Chinese owners.

Would TikTok be able to keep running with ByteDance-owned algorithms? Would it be as compelling a platform without them?

There are many questions that will be asked in the coming weeks, if Biden does sign off, as expected, shortly.

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