US House overwhelmingly passes bill to force ByteDance to divest TikTok - South China Morning Post

Opposition to the TikTok bill has been almost as bipartisan as support for it. Fifteen Republicans and 50 Democrats voted against the bill on Wednesday; there was one abstention.

Representative Mike Gallagher, chairman of the House select committee on China, introduced the TikTok bill on March 5. Photo: Getty Images/TNS

US President Joe Biden last week said he would sign the bill into law if it passes both chambers, though the legislation is likely to face litigation even if it becomes law. Previous efforts to restrict TikTok, which date back to 2020, have stalled or been blocked by courts.

The bill was introduced on March 5 by the leaders of the House select committee on China – including Representative Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican – and unanimously passed through the House energy and commerce committee last Thursday.

The fast-tracked bill also establishes a process for the president to designate other apps controlled by “foreign adversary” countries to face restrictions on operations in the US.

Lawmakers have expressed concern about TikTok’s potential to surveil and manipulate Americans through collection of their personal data and algorithm modifications.

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Companies controlled by a foreign adversary would “always choose the path for more control, more surveillance and more manipulation”, said Washington Republican Cathy McMorris Rodgers, chair of the House energy and commerce committee, on Wednesday.

“And in the case of TikTok, we wouldn’t even know it.”

In response, House critics of the bill – ranging from progressives like New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to MAGA (Make America Great Again) supporters like Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene – highlighted the dangers of emulating China’s censorship system and singling out TikTok among social media apps to target.

Some noted that they remained unconvinced of TikTok’s threat to US national security even after a closed-door briefing on the matter earlier this week.

Democratic congressman Ro Khanna of California, who represents Silicon Valley, leaves the US Capitol on Wednesday after voting against the TikTok bill. Photo: Getty Images via AFP

Ahead of Wednesday’s vote, California Democrat Ro Khanna gathered with TikTok users from across the country in front of the US Capitol Building to oppose Gallagher’s bill.

He released a TikTok video on Monday arguing for an “internet bill of rights” instead of what he described as hurting creators and organisers seeking to “challenge the political establishment”.

Khanna was the only member of the House select committee on China to vote against the bill on Wednesday, with New Jersey Democrat Andy Kim not voting.

Other notable “nays” on Wednesday included Connecticut Democrat Jim Himes, lead Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Massachusetts Democrat Jim McGovern, a frequent commentator on China’s human rights record.

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For its part, TikTok has argued that efforts to restrict it would hamper the free speech of 170 million Americans who use the short-video platform.

According to The Washington Post, the company rekindled negotiations in September with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US – a Treasury-led inter-agency group that reviews foreign transactions – to institute a plan restricting foreign access to American user data.

Called Project Texas, the US$1.5 billion plan would cede authority over TikTok’s American operations to a three-person board selected by CFIUS.

That board would run a subsidiary called US Data Security, which would handle all of the app’s critical functions in the United States, including user data, engineering, security and content moderation.

But lawmakers have remained unconvinced, telling TikTok’s chief executive Chew Shou Zi that only a ban or divestiture would be acceptable. Chew landed in Washington on Tuesday to make an appeal to senators to oppose the bill, per The Washington Post.

Chinese national security laws likely require data from the apps to be handed over on request from government agencies, though TikTok maintains it has neither given American user data to Beijing, nor has Beijing ever asked for it.

Responding to free-speech concerns from critics, Gallagher has repeatedly contended that his bill was not a ban of TikTok, but meant to force a change in the app’s ownership.

However, analysts say that the legislation effectively acts as a ban because Chinese government rules prevent the export of software, including the algorithm that serves as TikTok’s recommendation engine.

Additionally, “if ByteDance was forced to divest TikTok US, the acquisition by a US company would also require antitrust approval from the Chinese government”, said Paul Triolo of Albright Stonebridge Group, noting that this process typically took “much longer” than the divestiture period the bill seeks.

China’s commerce ministry said last year that it would “firmly oppose” a forced sale of the app.

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Triolo, who specialises in China and tech policy, added that China’s national security laws are too vague to conclude that China-based companies must turn over data on request from Beijing.

“None of the laws in question have implementing regulation that would provide any detail on what the laws actually mean in practice.”

Free speech advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote in a letter to the House energy and commerce committee last week that “it does not improve matters to say that this isn’t a ban”.

“Generally, the government cannot accomplish indirectly what it is barred from doing directly, and a forced sale is the kind of speech punishment that receives exacting scrutiny from the courts,” they wrote, citing a Montana court’s decision in November to block the state from banning TikTok.

In March 2023, a bipartisan group of senators led by Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, pushed a White House-supported effort to give the Biden administration new powers to restrict technologies posing national security risks.

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Bipartisan criticism has stymied that broadly targeted bill, which did not mention TikTok by name but would have likely affected the app’s ability to operate in the US.

Some senators remained undecided on the most recent effort to restrict TikTok.

South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham on Sunday said he was “conflicted” about Gallagher’s bill. Others, like Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden and Oklahoma Republican James Lankford, said they still needed to read the bill before deciding. Wyden expressed concern that the bill was moving too fast for a proper assessment of its implications.

Warner and Florida Republican Marco Rubio, leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, came out in support of the bill on Wednesday and said they would work in a bipartisan manner to push it through the Senate.

But Maria Cantwell, the Washington Democrat who chairs the Senate commerce committee, said she preferred other legislation to regulate apps.

Democratic senator Maria Cantwell of Washington has said she prefers other legislation to regulate apps. Photo: CQ Roll Call via Zuma Press/TNS

On Monday, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump reiterated his new-found opposition to a TikTok ban, which he first made clear last week. He now argues that a ban would only empower TikTok competitor Facebook, reversing his previous efforts to ban the app.

Trump reportedly met last month with Jeff Yass, a major TikTok investor and Republican donor, though the former president on Monday denied they had discussed the app.

The Biden administration itself has sent mixed signals: while it has prohibited the use of TikTok on federal devices and worked with Gallagher on his bill, Biden’s re-election campaign launched its official TikTok account last month.

A 2021 report from University of Toronto-based research group Citizen Lab found no “overt data transmission” by TikTok to the Chinese government, without ruling out the possibility that user data gathered outside China is transferred to the country afterwards.

Its analysis was “inconclusive” about whether TikTok employs political censorship of user posts.

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It also found that TikTok collected similar amounts of data as other social media platforms like Facebook.

TikTok users, for their part, have flooded Congressional offices with calls urging to not ban the app.

In videos attesting to TikTok’s positive impact on their lives, some said Congress was showing bias against the popular app in choosing not to target other social media apps, noting China could access their data through those apps even if TikTok were banned.

Others expressed scepticism that the app was manipulating content in favour of China.

“If China controls TikTok, they’re doing an awfully good job of censoring content that is critical of the US government,” said one TikTok creator with 1.4 million followers.

New York Democrat Jamaal Bowman last week posted on his TikTok account that moving towards a ban represented an effort at “silencing young people”.

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