TikTok is facing a possible complete ban in the United States following the approval of a House committee-backed legislation that will give President Biden the right to block the operation of the short-form video app.
Through votes cast along party lines on Wednesday, the House foreign affairs committee supported the legislation that will grant Biden’s administration new powers to ban TikTok and other apps seen as potential risk to the US national security.
The legislation follows culminating moves by states across the US to ban the Chinese-owned app on government-issued devices. The European Union Commission and Canada have also done the same.
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TikTok has been at the receiving end of the US nervousness about China’s espionage and the concern that the use of the social media app could make information on official devices vulnerable.
Late last year, the FBI director, Chris Wray joined lawmakers in the US to warn that the platform poses a potential risk to the US national security. That followed several other warnings issued by the US Congress, the military and the White House that TikTok poses a security risk.
Wray said the FBI was concerned that Beijing has the ability to control the app’s recommendation algorithm, “which allows them to manipulate content, and if they want to, to use it for influence operations.” He added that China could use the app to collect data on its users that could be used for traditional espionage operations.
This concern was reinforced by the Republican committee chair, Michael McCaul, who described TikTok this week as a “spy balloon in your phone”, in reference to the Chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina last month.
Voting along party lines, Democrats who are worried that the bill introduced by McCaul would deter America’s technological adversaries act voted against it, but Republican lawmakers pushed it through 24 to 16.
For now, it’s not clear if the House and Senate would pass the bill for it to be signed into law by Biden.
However, McCaul told Reuters after the vote that he thinks the TikTok bill will be taken up on the floor “fairly soon” and voted on by the full House this month.
US allies have upped their scrutiny of TikTok following the ban initiated by Washington and other states. With the EU Commission and Canada blocking the use of the app on government-issued phones, more countries are expected to jump the wagon soon.
However, on Monday, the British government said it has seen no evidence of the need to ban TikTok.
“We have no evidence to suggest that there is a necessity to ban people from using TikTok,” the UK’s secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, Michelle Donelan, told Politico. “That would be a very, very forthright move, that would require a significant evidence base to be able to do that.”
Similarly, Democrats believe the move to ban TikTok stands against the principles of free speech and other American interests.
Representative Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House foreign affairs committee, said he opposed the legislation because it would “damage our allegiances across the globe, bring more companies into China’s sphere, destroy jobs here in the United States and undercut core American values of free speech and free enterprise”, per The Guardian.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said on Tuesday the US’ ban of TikTok on government devices revealed Washington’s own insecurities and was an abuse of state power.
Concerned about the move, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), had warned through a letter written to McCaul this week, that the legislation was “vague and overbroad” and would “violate the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans who use TikTok to communicate, gather information, and express themselves daily”.
TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, has become a darling platform for people around the world. The app has racked up more than 1 billion users worldwide, according to analytics firm data.ai. The US, which has around 110 million users, is one of its largest markets.
The embattled company, which has unsuccessfully tried to mitigate the security concern arising from its ownership by ByteDance, a Beijing-based tech firm, said it was “disappointed” to see the legislation being brought forward.
“A US ban on TikTok is a ban on the export of American culture and values to the billion-plus people who use our service worldwide. We’re disappointed to see this rushed piece of legislation move forward, despite its considerable negative impact on the free speech rights of millions of Americans who use and love TikTok,” said a TikTok spokesperson.