President Joe Biden signed legislation on April 24 that would ban TikTok in the US unless it is spun off from Chinese parent company ByteDance.
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The company has nine months to sell TikTok – if this does not happen, the application will be completely banned in the United States. TikTok representatives said they plan to challenge the law in the courts, CNN writes.
What does the legislation say about TikTok?
The bill Biden signed gives TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, 270 days to sell TikTok. Failure to do this will lead to serious consequences: TikTok will be banned from US app stores and Internet hosting services that support it.
This will effectively limit new downloads of the program and interaction with its content. Biden’s decision to sign the bill Wednesday sets the sale deadline at Jan. 19, 2025. However, under the legislation, Biden could extend the deadline by another 90 days if he determines the company has made progress toward a sale, giving TikTok potentially a year before facing a ban.
What does TikTok say?
TikTok threatens legal action. In a video posted to TikTok, the company’s CEO Shaw Chu told users
Rest assured: we are not going anywhere. We are confident and will continue to fight for your rights in the courts. The facts and the Constitution are on our side, and we expect to win.
In a statement, a TikTok spokesperson called the law “unconstitutional” and said it would “destroy” the platform’s 170 million U.S. users and 7 million businesses that operate the app.
How did this get into the foreign aid bill?
A similar TikTok bill passed the House of Representatives in March but stalled in the Senate.
Procedurally, House Republicans this month added a revised TikTok bill to the foreign aid package in hopes of forcing the Senate to vote on TikTok legislation.
Combining the bill with foreign aid hastened passage of the TikTok legislation.
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.