Biden vows to implement a crackdown on TikTok, as Trump expresses worries

WASHINGTON: In response to opponent Donald Trump’s worries about a restriction on the 170 million-user TikTok app, President Joe Biden said on Friday that he will sign legislation giving China’s ByteDance around six months to sell the well-known app.
The TikTok crackdown bill was unanimously adopted by a committee on Thursday, and the US House of Representatives will vote on it on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.

Under regulations requiring two-thirds of members to vote “yes” in order for the motion to be approved, the House will vote on it.
“I will sign it if they pass it,” Democratic Senator Joe Biden said to reporters. The Senate, where several senators have said they want modifications to the measure, might have an unpredictable ending for the package.
On social media, Republican candidate for president in November, Donald Trump, who is against banning TikTok, said, “If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook… will double their business,” and that he does not want Facebook to be “doing better.”
Trump has already attacked Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, for restricting his access to Instagram and Facebook after two of his postings from the US Capitol brawl on January 6, 2021, were removed. February 2023 saw the reinstatement of his accounts.
Regarding whether he has a stance on the bill, the Trump team did not immediately respond. Meta Platforms did not want to respond.
According to a letter seen by Reuters, the Justice Department informed the House Committee on Energy and Commerce that a divestment measure would provide the government with a better legal position than a bill outlawing TikTok.
Vice President Mike Pence, who supported the House bill on TikTok, was a Trump ally. “Children in America are being mentally abused by China. “It’s enough,” he said on the social media platform X, which was once known as Twitter.
Per the measure, ByteDance would have 165 days to unload TikTok. If it didn’t, TikTok and Web hosting services for ByteDance-controlled apps would not be allowed to be offered in app stores run by Alphabet’s Google, Apple, and other companies.
Trump attempted to outlaw TikTok and WeChat, a Chinese-owned company, in 2020, but the courts stopped him.
In response to Trump’s assertion that the former president assisted in addressing concerns about TikTok users in the United States via a $1.5 billion enterprise initiative, Republican Senator Rand Paul, who had previously opposed moves to expedite a ban on the app, moved to condemn the comments.
“So why is the House GOP siding with Biden and still trying to ban Tik Tok?” Paul used the acronym for Republicans in his writing on X. “Congress will behave similarly to Chinese communists, who have also outlawed TikTok, if they do so. Just uphold the First Amendment, please.
In an executive order signed in August 2020, Trump claimed that the data collection on TikTok “threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information, potentially allowing China to track the locations of federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”
TikTok claims the House measure is effectively a prohibition, stating that it has not shared and will not share US customer data with the Chinese government. It’s uncertain whether TikTok could be unloaded in six months or if China would allow any sales.
“TikTok will be completely banned in the United States as a result of this legislation,” the business said after the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s decision. “The government is attempting to strip 170 million Americans of their constitutional right to free expression.”
Getting legislation adopted by the House and Senate in an election year may be challenging due to the popularity of the app. The Biden reelection campaign joined TikTok last month.
The Trump campaign isn’t on TikTok.