How would a TikTok Ban play out?
WIRED’s coverage of the ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act (CikTok is a Social Media Hat), which was introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio in 2022
The new legislation is not the first time Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi have tried to ban or force a sale of TikTok. The pair introduced the ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act alongside Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in late 2022, which would empower the president to ban social media companies from countries of concern, invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
On Wednesday, the vote took place on the bill that would ban TikTok. We also have instructions to get your videos off TikTok. Read all of WIRED’s coverage.
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But the road to the blockbuster vote in the House of Representatives on Wednesday was months in the making. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), who chairs the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and is a lead author of the bill, said he’d worked for eight months with colleagues including Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) to prepare it.
Members were given access to classified briefings so they could understand the risks before the vote. For some members, these sessions seemed instrumental to their decisions to vote for the bill’s passage. Immediately before the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 50–0 to pass the legislation last Thursday, they heard from representatives from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence in a classified hearing.
The Senate might slow down the process because of the legislation’s fate. There’s not yet a companion bill in that chamber, and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has not yet committed to a course of action besides reviewing the bill.
How the House quietly revived the TikTok ban bill: A human-righteous advocate for freedom and justice in the US,” Krishnamoorthi said
The senior staffer for a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee said that their office had gotten calls from students who were in tears about TikTok being taken away.
“One person threatened self harm unless they got their TikTok. Another impersonated a member of Congress’ son, scaring the bejesus out of the congressman, by the way,” said Krishnamoorthi. In the hands of a foreign enemy in a moment of national peril, there is a kind of influence campaign which could cause chaos and division and hurt the national security of our country.
But that statute comes with legal hurdles, and Gallagher acknowledged after the vote Wednesday that approach “wasn’t the right bill.” HR 7521 has made it illegal to distribute social media services controlled by a foreign adversary. It also gives covered companies six months to divest from the foreign adversary ownership or stake to remain in the US.
The authors worked with stakeholders and the White House to address concerns about whether the legislation could violate the constitution. Even after all the work, Krishnamoorthi told reporters that the 352 votes the bill received “was not predicted.”
“It was a 12 page bill,” Gallagher said of the speed right after the vote. “I mean, it wasn’t like an omnibus that we just shoved in people’s faces. A member of Congress could read 12 pages in a single day.
Lobbying Activity in the TikTok App Store: Congress Turns Back the Good, the Bad, or the Ugly: Rep. Anna Eshoo Tells The Verge
The staffer for the Energy and Commerce Committee said they had not seen any lobbying activity from TikTok since their CEO testified last year. They were taken by surprise by the number of calls.
For four hours, the office’s four phone lines were constantly full, with others going to voicemail. Staffers would work on the phones while others went to the bathroom.
The calls were unusual because they were not authorized to speak about internal matters and five congressional staffers did not have permission to speak on the record. For one, they didn’t seem to have any sort of script. They would call back after they realized they made it to a live person. Most of them sounded very young. Several staffers who spoke to The Verge estimated that callers sounded like they were 14, 15 years old, and sometimes even younger. The notification went to users over the age of 18.
A young caller asked if they could leave a comment without giving out their information, after the staffer asked if the caller wanted to record their message. The senior staffer recalled explaining that protecting the caller’s private information was exactly the point of the legislation they were calling about.
The House had received over 200 calls last Thursday, but only a few left information, according to Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA). “When the others heard someone answer the phone, they hung up.”
This was a test of how the app could be used to stop Congress from debating on the issue of Taiwan. Or removing China’s permanent normal trade relations status,” Gallagher told reporters after the vote. “The possibility for dangerous propaganda is too immense to allow one of our foremost adversaries to have this control over what is increasingly becoming the dominant news platform in America.”
“It was probably the number one worst public relations stunt that TikTok pulled,” Krishnamoorthi told The Verge. “That was kind of the secret, not-so-secret reason why, for instance, the House Energy and Commerce Committee had a number of lean-yeses on the day of the vote that became hell-yeses by the time of the vote.”
In a letter to Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi on Monday, TikTok’s vice president of public policy Michael Beckerman wrote, “It is offensive that you would complain about hearing from your constituents and seek to deny them of their constitutional rights. One would hope that you are familiar with the right to petition the government for help with grievances.
Source: How the House quietly revived the TikTok ban bill
House-tiktok-ban-staffers-calls-congress [How the House quietly revived the Tik Tok ban bill]
As a member of the Congress, I should pay attention to any national security threat to the U.S.
After a stint on the House Intelligence Committee, Eshoo said the one ahead of Thursday’s committee markup was excellent. Hearing from the intelligence officials made her feel less concerned about the process. I would have objected if it had been brought up without the updated briefings. “But it was, I thought, a very thorough briefing, layered over other briefings that we have had.”
Krishnamoorthi told The Verge that the briefings were not necessarily a single revelation. “I think that it’s probably the level of seriousness with which people addressed the topic. The way that it was done was not partisan. He added that the opportunity for lawmakers to have “candid conversations” with each other in a bipartisan, classified setting was also helpful.
Source: How the House quietly revived the TikTok ban bill
Rep. Jim Himes: We Don’t Have the Right Data, But We Do Have [The Right] Security, and We Can Protect It
The fact that they shut down newspapers and broadcast stations is one of the key differences between us and them. We do not.”
Some members who voted against the legislation felt it was the wrong tool to fit the concerns. Notably, Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was one of the members who opposed the bill. He said in a statement that, due to his position on the committee, “I have more insight than most into the online threats posed by our adversaries. But one of the key differences between us and those adversaries is the fact that they shut down newspapers, broadcast stations, and social media platforms. We do not. We trust our citizens to be worthy of their democracy. We do not trust our government to decide what information they may or may not see.”
E&C Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-NJ) also expressed concern about the speed of the process ahead of the committee’s classified hearing and vote last week. Pallone said he wanted to hear from the witnesses before making his decision. After leaving the hearing he was a member of the panel that voted on legislation to be passed. He cast a vote in favor of it on the floor, but later advocated for it.
To move forward, Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-WA) will need to usher the legislation through her panel. But Cantwell has served as a roadblock to popular bipartisan tech legislation in the past. She was the only one of the “four corners” of the relevant committees (the top Republicans and Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Senate Commerce Committee) to withhold support for the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, the most concrete and comprehensive piece of privacy legislation to reach such an advanced stage. It passed out of the House committee by a vote of 53–2 in 2022.
In a statement after the House vote on the TikTok bill, Cantwell said she’d try to find “a path forward that is constitutional and protects civil liberties,” but did not necessarily commit to advancing that exact legislation.
Cantwell is worried about the exploitation of Americans’ sensitive data and the attempts by foreign adversaries to build backdoors in our information communication technology and services supply chains. “These are national security threats and it is good [that] members in both chambers are taking them seriously.”
Source: How the House quietly revived the TikTok ban bill
Reply to “Comment on ‘Putnam'” and “Cosmology of the Century” by L.J. Gallagher
The guy who spoke after the vote tried to downplay Trump’s opposition. “If you actually read what Trump said, the goal of the bill is not to shut down TikTok and force its users onto Facebook. He said that would be a bad outcome. “So in that sense, I agree with what Trump said. But our bill allows for something to be done.
Gallagher also appealed to Trump’s ego and self-crafted image as a dealmaker, saying, “Trump may, if he gets reelected, have an opportunity to consummate the deal of the century.”
