The legal battle surrounding social media app TikTok has continued to gain steam after the U.S. House of Representatives threw a Hail Mary pass yesterday, voting overwhelmingly to potentially send TikTok packing unless its Chinese investors at ByteDance agree to divest their stakes in the app. This takes online beef to a whole new level.
This decision, marking the first time Congress has targeted a specific internet app with a ban, was wrapped in the pretext of national security concerns. However, is that all there is to this story? As it stands, some 170 million American users, accustomed to scrolling through an endless buffet of short video content, are now worried that the popular app will no longer be available on their devices.
The bill, charmingly dubbed the "Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act," like a joke-bill straight from a satire about propaganda that whooshes over the heads of casual consumers, soared through the House with a vote of 352-65. Bipartisanship, apparently, is not dead when it comes to scrutinizing social media apps with foreign ties.
Here's where it gets interesting: President Joe Biden, who launched an official TikTok account, @bidenhq, as part of his reelection campaign, has hinted he'd sign this decree into law, stirring the pot even further.
Yeah, this is the same person who, back in 2022, signed legislation that banned the use of TikTok on government-owned devices. As George Saunders put it, "Irony is just honesty with the volume cranked up."