December 13, 2022
One Senator and two House Representatives want move the TikTok ban forward in the United States.
Here we go again.
A new bill was introduced in the Senate and the House today called — the Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party Act – or ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act.
The bill sponsors which include two Republicans and one Democrat say – if passed—the bill would block transactions from any social media company in or under the influence of China, Russia or several other countries of concern.
All this comes after the US government has yet to come up with a deal with TikTok to ensure US user data isn’t shared with the Chinese government. In case you didn’t know — because TikTok is owned by a Chinese company called ByteDance TikTok is required under Chinese law to make the app’s user data available to the Chinese Communist party if it asks for it. The bill says –if passed—the block on TikTok would not be lifted until the President can assure Congress TikTok is no longer sharing data with China which US security experts say is a threat to our national security. TikTok US has not yet responded to this bill but it has repeatedly said that it stores us user data on its own US servers in data centers in Virginia and Singapore.
What are the realities of this bill passing? It’s hard to tell. It may pass the new Republican controlled House next year, but it’s less likely to pass the Democrat controlled Senate. And even if it somehow does pass both chambers, the bill is relying on the same law that President Trump used to attempt his ban TikTok in 2020. If you remember, those actions failed repeatedly in federal court.
Read the 9-page ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act here.
Read more from Senator Rubio about the bill here.
Read TikTok’s latest release about it’s US user data and data policy here.
