The bill to ban TikTok did not pass in the House
“That Midwestern Mom”: A Story About TikTok, Drugs, Drug Adversaries, and the Rise and Fall of Big Tech
Many constitutional scholars say it is necessary to clear legal hurdles to ban TikTok. The legal balance could change if information about TikTok is declassified in Washington.
Two years ago, “That Midwestern Mom” uploaded one of her quirky Minnesota “salad” concoctions and it went all the way to the top on TikTok. The items she used made her a viral sensation.
Other TikTokers use their platform to give back. Isely White is a former drug dealer and felon who lives in Baltimore. He helps homeless people in his community with his platform.
The potential acquisition of TikTok by a Big Tech firm raises antitrust concerns as Biden administration has taken a tough stance against tech industry mergers that inflate the size and influence of already massive companies.
The company has also touted an initiative dubbed “Project Texas,” saying that all U.S. user data has been transferred to servers controlled by Austin-based software company Oracle. Third-party auditors are looking into Americans’ data, according to TikTok.
Putting the App Down on the Floor: An Analysis of an Energy and Commerce Measure that Prohibits the Use of Video Sharing by Chinese People
The bipartisan measure was unanimously approved last week by the House Energy and Commerce committee. It’s coming to the floor Wednesday under a process that requires two-thirds of the House to pass.
A bill that would prohibit the use of the video sharing app by Chinese people is not a ban, says the leader of the GOP sponsor of the bill.
National security assessments show that the app can be used to target journalists and interfere in elections, and that is a threat to user privacy. National security agencies gave a classified presentation on their analysis to House members on Tuesday.
Prominent TikTok creators questioned the bill. Charlotte Palermino, the CEO and founder of skin-care brand Dieux, says that she doesn’t think that the bill will actually protect Americans. I think that it’s a good representation of American politics today, where we have people with no understanding of technology trying to regulate it.
Teenagers crying, one threatening suicide and one pretending to be a friend of a colleague’s sons were just some of the calls member offices received. “That, to me demonstrates how the platform could be weaponized in the future.”
If foreign owned apps are found to be a security threat, the president will be able to address them. It creates a system to download data for users and switch to another platform.
Illinois Democrat, Raja Krishnamoorthi, is the ranking Democrat on the House Select committee on China and helped write the bill. He pushed back on the company’s argument, telling NPR, “There’s no first amendment right to espionage, there’s no first amendment right to harm our national security.”
The company stresses that it has invested its own money to set up a firewall in an effort dubbed “Project Texas” to address data privacy concerns and keep users’ data in the U.S.
TikTok: A social media enemy – Trump’s anti-social media outburst during the 2020 presidential budget crisis, and a message on Silent Depression
Donald Trump proposed a ban on Muslims in 2020 when he was the president. The House bill is not something that he supports.
He promised to stop using the social media app when he was president. Trump explained his new opposition in an interview with CNBC on Monday, saying that despite his the possible security risk, he opposed a ban because it meant users would move to another platform that he considered more dangerous.
“There’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad with TikTok. But the thing I don’t like is that without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people along with a lot of the media,” he said.
Despite low unemployment and falling inflation, TikTok is full of viral videos bemoaning the U.S. economy. One group of posts uses a term called Silent Depression. The posts suggest that the country is worse off now than it was in 1930. (My colleagues Jeanna Smialek and Jim Tankersley reported on the posts late last year.)
The War Between Israel and Palestine in the Light of Hamas: How Sen. Rand Paul and the House Select Committee Face Problems Bringing New Light to the Problem
After Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack, TikTok flooded users with videos expressing extreme positions from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, tilted toward the Palestinian side, a Wall Street Journal analysis found. “Many stoked fear,” The Journal reported. The videos praise an old Osama bin Laden letter.
In December, a Rutgers University research group concluded that videos about topics the Chinese government dislikes — including Tibet, Uyghurs, Hong Kong protests and the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown — were strangely hard to find on TikTok. All were more prominent on Instagram. The Rutgers expert I spoke with told me that it was not believable.
President Joe Biden has already said he would sign the bill, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, if both chambers advance it.
Even though the bill sailed through the House only a week after it was first introduced, the Senate will present a different set of challenges.
To start, there’s no companion bill yet, so the legislation is barely at the start line in that chamber. And even if one is introduced, Senate rules could make it tricky to maintain enough support (60 out of 100 members) to clear it. Just one senator can put a hold on legislation to keep it from advancing quickly.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has indicated he could be willing to do just that. He told The Washington Post prior to the House vote that he would block any bill he believed to violate the Constitution and said Congress shouldn’t “be trying to take away the First Amendment rights of [170] million Americans.”
Do you think TikTok can be banned if you don’t get it? Sen. Josh Hawley (D-MO): The Senate should take up the RestRICT Act immediately after the House vote
A long legal process could leave room for doubts — and lobbying money — to seep in. Just moments before the TikTok CEO testified in the House, the Senate introduced the RestRICT Act, another attempt to ban the company. Despite early excitement about the measure, it slowly fell off the radar as opponents lodged their critiques. It didn’t move through the chamber.
The Senate should take up this bill immediately after the House vote, stated Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) after the House vote.
The Senate Intelligence Committee chair and vice chair, Mark Warner and Marco Rubio, respectively, said in a statement that they were encouraged by the vote in the House and that they look forward to working together to get the bill passed.
Warner is willing to get behind a House bill that he was the lead sponsor of. Warner supports the new House legislation because he feels that there are threats from TikTok’s ownership.
There is a big tech privacy issue for children according to Sen. Ed Mcmaney (D-MA). Children and teens are being preyed on by US-owned companies. TikTok should not be banned to fix their practices. The answer is passing my COPPA 2.0.
The RESTRICT Act: Hitting the bullets with social media bans: The impact of the NJ Senator Schumer on a platform of independent businesses
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has so far been noncommittal about the path the bill could take. The Senate will review the legislation when it arrives from the House, Schumer said after the bill was passed.
Several supporters emphasized that the bill is not an all-out ban, but instead an incentive to force divestment so TikTok can separate its ties to China.
But opponents of the bill on both sides of the aisle echoed each others’ concerns. Opponents fear the bill will be an ineffective solution to real national security concerns, while coming with unacceptable limits on free speech and expansion of governmental power.
The president has the power to determine what Americans can see on their phones and computer equipment, according to Rep. Thomas Massie.
Some Democrats expressed their reservations about an all-out ban. And despite the early push from a group of powerful lawmakers, the RESTRICT Act ultimately fizzled out amid a strong lobbying campaign by TikTok and Republican concerns about granting too much executive branch power over the private sector.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said she worried the bill could be used to force the sale of other social media platforms, particularly mentioning X, which is now owned by Elon Musk.
Chinese influence operations aren’t restricted to TikTok. In November 2023, Meta announced that it had removed a massive Chinese influence operation from its platforms that had targeted the US. Some smaller networks had also targeted users in India and Tibet.
Palermino sees TikTok Shop as a valuable tool for small businesses and says shuttering TikTok would have a negative short-term effect on Dieux. Losing that would be difficult, she says. While she’s confident Dieux could pivot to focus on other platforms, she suspects a TikTok ban could seriously impact other independent and up-and-coming brands within the United States in a big way. “It will hurt their business.”
President Biden has indicated he would sign the law, but first it must clear the Senate, where it faces an uncertain future. The Senate has halted several anti-TikTok efforts, and it is not known if the House’s legislation will get the same treatment.
TikTok’s Close Encounter with the U.S. Senate is a Tale of Two Problems: Online Security and Virtual Private Networks
Legal experts say shutting down a social media platform in the name of national security is something that can only be accomplished if the security threat is overwhelming, thereby justifying a restriction of online speech.
TikTok can’t be stopped for 170 million Americans who have already downloaded it. The users would not be able to download any further software updates if TikTok were removed from app stores. And experts say without the ability to update regularly, the app would become slow, glitchy, buggy and rife with other problems to the point where using it at all would be just about impossible.
The Senate will pass a companion bill, but there is a six-month deadline to sell, which could be extended by court challenges.
Virtual private networks can be used to shield a location and get past restrictions. In places like Russia and China, the technique is very popular due to the fact that the governments have banned popular internet services.
National security officials in Washington, who have been investigating TikTok’s ties to Beijing for five years, have not approved the plan.
