The bill that could ban TikTok is officially signed into law. It made its way to President Biden’s desk on April 24 after passing in both the House and Senate, a process best explained by Schoolhouse Rock’s sentient piece of legislation. Below, everything that’s happened up to Biden signing the bill into law.
Slay the House Down
March 13, 2024: The House didn’t appreciate the TikTok original “Who TF Did I Marry” like the rest of us did. Taste issue! By that, I mean the chamber voted to ban TikTok on March 13 if the China-based owner doesn’t sell, the Associated Press reported. That doesn’t mean the app will disappear from your screens just yet — the Senate would have to pass the bill for it to make its way to Biden’s desk (the president said he would sign it), and TikTok would have five months to sell. If the app is not divested after all that, then we won’t be able to watch Nara Smith make cereal from scratch or wonder how long indie artists will keep getting screwed over by the UMG feud. The bill, passed by a bipartisan 352–65 vote, has an unclear future in the Senate.
Why do they want TikTok banned? Lawmakers say the current ownership structure of ByteDance, Ltd., the app’s parent company, is a national security threat. Citing TikTok’s ability to mine data from users in the United States, the bill argues that the Chinese government could technically use its intelligence laws to subpoena information from the ByteDance-owned app. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among those who voted no on the measure. “This bill was incredibly rushed, from committee to vote in 4 days, with little explanation,” she wrote on X minutes before the vote. “There are serious antitrust and privacy questions here, and any national security concerns should be laid out to the public prior to a vote.” About 170 million users would be affected if TikTok is banned. Their screen time will surely suffer a blow.
The Senate Is in, Too
April 23, 2024: The Senate has dealt the second blow. The Associated Press reported that the bill that could potentially ban TikTok has passed the Senate in a 79-18 vote. Last week, House Republicans were able to get this legislation included in a $95 billion package that would send aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. President Joe Biden said in a statement after it passed that he will sign it on Wednesday.
The TikTok bill previously stalled in the Senate over concerns that the China-based parent company ByteDance wasn’t being given enough time to divest, given how complicated a billion-dollar deal like that could be. The bill that passed today is a revised version that would give ByteDance nine months to sell before threatening a ban, with a possible three-month extension if a sale is in progress. Millions of FYPs hang in the balance.
Signed, Sealed, Delivered
April 24, 2024: The fate of TikTok is looking darker than ever. Biden signed measures into law requiring TikTok parent company ByteDance to sell the popular video-sharing app within nine months (or a year if Biden invokes a 90-day extension) or else be banned in the country, CNBC reports. The bill was folded into a multibillion-dollar package allotting $60 billion in aid to Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel, and $8 billion for security in Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific.
TikTok intends to fight the new law. “This unconstitutional law is a TikTok ban, and we will challenge it in court,” the company tweeted Wednesday after Biden signed. “This ban would devastate seven million businesses and silence 170 million Americans.” Not to mention all the cute pets that would be unemployed.
This post has been updated.
