The United States Congress announced today that it will introduce a bill that would ban TikTok from operating in America unless it is sold by Bytedance. This is the same step taken by the Donald Trump administration and will now continue under the Joe Biden administration who let the original directive lapse years ago.
The bill to be introduced on Thursday gives Bytedance 165 days to sell their TikTok business in the United States. After that period, application stores such as Google Play Store and Apple App Store can be fined if they continue to allow applications to be downloaded in the United States. This is a bill that Montana tried to enforce last year but was rejected by the courts for violating the right to free speech enshrined in the constitution.
TikTok currently has over 170 million users in the United States. As Trump did, congress used the excuse that TikTok poses a risk to national security due to its alleged collusion with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This move was a bit of a surprise because Biden had just opened his official TikTok account a few weeks ago.
TikTok has already released a statement saying that this new bill if passed violates the country's constitution and will harm millions of small businesses that generate income through their platform.