by Update: The House Energy & Commerce Committee unanimously passed legislation to force ByteDance to divest TikTok or face banning the social media platform from app stores or web hosting services.
The 50-O committee voted in favor of the legislation, which must now be voted on by the full House. But Speaker Mike Johnson has expressed support for the bill.
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The vote followed a lobbying effort by TikTok, which included sending tips to users urging them to contact their member of Congress to protest the legislation.
Legislators’ offices reported being inundated with calls, but the strategy may have backfired when it reached committee members.
Marking the evening, Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), the committee’s chairwoman, said that “we have seen firsthand, in real time, how the Chinese Communist party can weaponize platforms like TikTok to attack the American people to manipulate. .” She accused the company of forcing users to “contact their representative if they wanted to continue using TikTok.” She said the case was a “clear national security threat to the United States”.
TikTok has denied that the Chinese government has access to Americans’ user data.
In a statement, TikTok said, “This legislation has a predetermined outcome: a complete ban on TikTok in the United States. The government is trying to strip 170 million Americans of their constitutional right to free expression. This will damage millions of businesses, deny artists an audience, and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said he will bring the bill to the floor for a vote next week.
BEFORE THIS: TikTok users have revealed they received push notifications urging them to contact their members of Congress to protest newly proposed legislation that would require Chinese-owned parent company ByteDance to ban the app. to dispossess.
The ad warns users to “Stop shutting down TikTok,” warning that Congress is “planning a total ban on TikTok.” There is a link where they can enter their ZIP code and then call their member of Congress, according to the lawmakers.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee is expected to vote this afternoon on legislation that would ban app stores or web hosting services from TikTok applications unless it ties to ByteDance. The bill also gives the president a process to designate a social media application controlled by a foreign enemy as a national security risk. China-based ByteDance would have about five months to divest its US operations.
TikTok has long been a target of lawmakers who have warned that US user data could be shared with the Chinese government, as the legislation’s authors see the bill as addressing a national security issue.
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Control Requests Act was introduced earlier this week. The White House has expressed its support, as has Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.
A TikTok spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.
But two of the main champions of the legislation, Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Speaker Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), responded to the campaign against the bill. Gallagher is the chairman and Krishnamoorthi is the ranking member of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.
Gallagher said that TikTok’s pop-up messages to users “say our effort is a total ban. That is a lie. That is not what the bill does. Here you have an example of a request governed by hostility to the American people and interfering with the legislative process of Congress.”
Krishnamoorthi added, “They are using the geolocation of the users to be able to identify the member of Congress who will call it. This is the kind of data, by the way, that ByteDance used from TikTok to target journalists. This is exactly the problem we now have with a social media app controlled by foreign enemies. It just shows the need for this particular bill.”
“The intimidation tactics, the disinformation has to stop,” Gallagher said.
TikTok has long denied that it shares US user data with the Chinese government. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified at a contentious House Energy and Commerce hearing last year, with some lawmakers citing a Chinese law that requires companies to cooperate with the country’s intelligence services, if asked to do so. Chew, however, tried to allay concerns by pointing to a project to keep data on US servers.
Conference staff reported on some of the calls they were receiving. “We’ve been getting a lot of calls from high school students asking what a Sign is. Yes indeed,” wrote Taylor Hulsey, communications director for Representative Vern Buchanan (R-FL).
Earlier this week, TikTok issued a statement opposing the legislation.
“This bill is a total ban on TikTok, no matter how much the authors try to hide it. This legislation will trample on the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of the platform they rely on to grow and create jobs.”
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