The U.S. House has advanced a bipartisan bill that would make the popular social media app TikTok unavailable in the United States, with lawmakers largely citing concerns about national security.
The legislation was introduced this week by Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The measure passed through the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee with a 50-0 vote on Thursday, sending the bill to the full House.
If enacted, the bill would give ByteDance — a Beijing-based company — about 5 months to sell TikTok. If ByteDance does not divest TikTok by that date, U.S. app stores such as Apple and Google could not legally offer TikTok or provide web hosting services.
The bill would also create a process for the President to prohibit access to an app owned by a foreign adversary if they deem it poses a threat to national security.
Lawmakers have discussed concerns with TikTok for more than a year, primarily arguing the Chinese government could force the company to share data on American users. TikTok says it has never and would never do that.
In a joint statement Thursday, Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi said that as long as TikTok is owned by ByteDance, the app “poses a grave threat to U.S. national security.”
TikTok has been swift in launching a campaign opposing the bill.
In a statement following the committee vote, the company said: “This legislation has a predetermined outcome: a total ban of TikTok in the United States. The government is attempting 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.”
Some users who open the app have received a pop-up message with a nearly identical message. It also includes a call to action for users to “Let Congress know what TikTok means to you and tell them to vote NO.”
Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi posted a video in response to the campaign, saying TikTok’s claim that the bill is an “outright ban” is a lie.
“That is not what the bill does,” Gallagher said. “So here you have an example of an adversary-controlled application lying to the American people and interfering with the legislative process in Congress.”
He said lawmakers worked for months to arrive at a bipartisan solution that allows TikTok “to survive as long as it breaks up with ByteDance and by extension the CCP.”
Krishnamoorthi said lawmakers want TikTok to remain available but under new ownership, urging users to ask ByteDance to divest the app.
“It’s really a choice for ByteDance,” he said. “It’s a choice about whether or not they are going to allow TikTok to ultimately be beholden to the CCP. We hope that they choose correctly and we hope that you as users also ask them to choose correctly.”
