Solen Feyissa
The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee has approved a bill that can make it easy for the U.S. to ban TikTok in the United States its parent company, unless ByteDance sells the platform.
The legislation which was passed secured 50 votes in favor, 0 against it, giving an ultimatum of 165 days to sell TikTok. If ByteDance fails to comply with it, the U.S. will be restricting Google and Apple from listing TikTok on their app and play stores.
This bill was passed amid national security concerns, on how ByteDance is handling the data being added to by U.S. citizens. The United States accused the platform is selling user data to third parties.
TikTok reacted to this bill strongly and says it infringes on Americans’ First Amendment rights and would harm American creators who make their living on the platform.
American Civil Liberties Union and some Democratic representatives argue that passing such a bill would cause the loss of millions of dollars and is a step toward undermining free speech and privacy rights.
