House lawmakers move quickly with plan to ban TikTok from the United States
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| Illustration: wallpapercave.com |
House lawmakers are moving with dizzying speed with a plan that could ban TikTok from the United States. In the span of two days this week, a key House committee introduced and approved a bill targeting TikTok. The full House is set to vote on it as early as next week, and the White House says President Joe Biden is prepared to sign it.
If enacted, the bill would give TikTok roughly five months to separate from its China-linked parent company, ByteDance, or else app stores in the United States would be prohibited from hosting the app on their platforms.
The bill lays out similar restrictions for any app allegedly controlled by foreign adversaries, such as China, Iran, Russia, or North Korea. App stores that violate the legislation could be fined based on the number of users of a banned app. The bill establishes fines of $5,000 per user of a banned app. So in the case of TikTok, Apple and Google could potentially be on the hook for up to $850 billion in fines each.
TikTok is calling the legislation an attack on the First Amendment rights of its users. It launched a call-to-action campaign within its app, urging users to call their representatives in Washington to oppose the bill. Multiple congressional offices say they’ve been flooded with calls.
They allege TikTok poses a national security threat because the Chinese government could use its intelligence laws against ByteDance, forcing it to hand over the data of US TikTok users. Policymakers worry that that information could then be used to identify intelligence targets or enable disinformation or propaganda campaigns.
While in office, Trump used a series of executive orders to try to force ByteDance to sell TikTok and to bar app stores from hosting the platform. Those efforts stalled amid legal challenges, but Trump played a key role in making TikTok an issue in the first place.
This bill would instead create clear, all-new authorities for the president to ban a foreign-owned social media app. The lawmakers behind this week's bill say they have worked hard to iron out First Amendment concerns and consulted with officials from the White House and across Washington to ensure it can withstand a legal challenge.
The bill is advancing remarkably quickly in the House, with a floor vote expected soon. The question is whether it will have a future in the Senate. There is currently no companion bill to the House bill in the Senate, and Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell, who chairs the Commerce Committee, has provided a non-committal statement on the bill.
Civil society groups argue that even if the bill's actual text doesn't directly censor TikTok or its users, it still has the ultimate effect of doing so. First Amendment experts suggest that courts will see through the bill's mechanics and question whether lawmakers could have achieved their goals through a less restrictive alternative.
Courts have held that Americans have a constitutional right to receive foreign propaganda, even if the US government doesn't like it. By that precedent, it would be unconstitutional for the government to ban TikTok, even if it were a direct mouthpiece for the Chinese government.
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