US politics is getting serious: Democrats and Republicans want to see Tiktok under American control. A law for this is on the way – but the prospects of success are unclear.
A US law intended to bring the short video app Tiktok under American control has cleared the first hurdle. The House of Representatives in Washington approved it with a large majority of 352 yes votes. Now it goes to the US Senate, where the positions are still unclear.
US President Joe Biden has already made it clear that he would sign the law. Skeptics point out that the plan is likely to keep the courts busy for years because it could be vulnerable to the freedom of speech enshrined in the US Constitution.
Tiktok is the only internationally successful online platform that does not come from the USA. The law could lead to Tiktok being banned from American app stores if the service remains owned by Bytedance. In the USA, this is seen across all parties as a Chinese company that must bow to the will of the Chinese Communist Party.
Security advisor: Ban is not a goal
According to a media report, Bytedance is determined to exhaust all legal remedies against an impending ban in the USA before considering a sale. A separation from Tiktok is seen as a last option, the financial service Bloomberg wrote on Tuesday, citing informed people. In an initial reaction to the vote in the House of Representatives, the company called on the Senate to consider the consequences for the US economy, as seven million small businesses are active on the platform.
Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan previously said it was not about a “Tiktok ban” but about a change of ownership. “Do we want Tiktok as a platform to be owned by an American company – or owned by China?” he asked at a White House press conference on Tuesday. “Do we want data from Tiktok – data from children and adults – to stay here in America or go to China?”
In the USA – as in Europe – there are concerns that the app could be used to collect information about users by Chinese authorities or for political influence. Governments of several countries and the EU Commission banned the use of Tiktok on work cell phones.
Parties want to work together
The House vote was a rare moment of unity between Republicans and Democrats. Only 65 representatives voted against it – 15 from Republicans and 50 from Democrats. The well-known Democratic MP Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized that the law was rushed to a vote and raised serious competition and data protection questions.
In the Senate, Democrat Mark Warner and Republican Marco Rubio announced they would work together to get the bill through the chamber. It would give Bytedance a deadline of almost six months to sell Tiktok.
But experts like former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos are skeptical. “If the law passes in its current form, the biggest winners will be the lawyers,” said Stamos on the US broadcaster CNBC. Because it will keep the courts busy for years. He sees a data protection law as a better solution, which would fundamentally stipulate that Americans’ data should not be accessed from countries such as China or Russia.
U-turn on Trump
Tiktok always rejects concerns and emphasizes that it does not see itself as a subsidiary of a Chinese company. Bytedance is 60 percent owned by Western investors. The company headquarters are on the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean. Critics counter that the Chinese founders, with a share of 20 percent, maintained control thanks to higher voting rights and that Bytedance has a large headquarters in Beijing.
According to its own information, Tiktok has 170 million users in the USA. During his term as US President, Donald Trump tried to force a sale of Tiktok’s US business to American investors with threats of a ban.
But the plan failed primarily because US courts suspected the plans for a Tiktok ban to violate the freedom of speech enshrined in the US Constitution. A current law in the state of Montana that was supposed to ban Tiktok from the app stores there is also on hold.
Trump has now backed away from calls for a ban. Tiktok is an important counterweight to Facebook, which he sees as an “enemy of the people,” Trump recently said on CNBC.
Tiktok vows improvement – Congress remains suspicious
Before Biden took a clear position, the Democrats were very divided when it came to Tiktok: On the one hand, the president wants to take a tough position against China, and on the other hand, the app is popular among young users, whose votes he needs for re-election in November. Biden’s campaign team opened a Tiktok account just a few weeks ago.
The Wall Street Journal wrote that Tiktok’s management was caught off guard by the bill. The service has been trying for years to gain trust in the USA with the plan to store information from American users exclusively in the country and to have data movements monitored by a US partner. But at hearings in the US Congress, Tiktok boss Shou Chew continued to be met with strong distrust. In a desperate attempt to stop the law, Tiktok let users call the offices of MPs from their constituency from the app a few days ago to protest against it.
China’s Foreign Ministry accused the US of bullying Tiktok. This behavior undermines the international economic and trade order and will ultimately backfire on the USA, said Foreign Office spokesman Wang Wenbin in Beijing. Despite never finding evidence of a threat to national security, Washington never stopped pushing Tiktok out, he continued.