If there’s one thing that unites an otherwise bitterly divided Washington, it’s China. Enter TikTok’s owner ByteDance.
If there’s one thing that unites an otherwise bitterly divided US Congress, it’s China. That’s why a planned vote this week that would force China’s ByteDance to either divest its US TikTok businessThe congressional House energy and commerce committee approved the bill unanimously, 50-0, last week after receiving classified briefings on the security risks to Americans of the popular social media platform, owned by the Beijing-based ByteDance.
That campaign didn’t go down well, reinforcing concerns about the potential of a Chinese entity to exploit its user base – about 170 million of TikTok’s billion-plus monthly users are Americans – to try to influence US government policy.
ByteDance has signalled that it will challenge the legislation, if it is enacted, on constitutional grounds, saying the US was trying to strip 170 million Americans of their first amendment rights to free expression. The bill would damage millions of businesses, deny artists an audience and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators, it has said.
With the TikTok app capable of tracking everything from users’ locations to their contacts and rapidly building out e-commerce links with retailers and suppliers, its access to vast, intrusive and ever-increasing amounts of user data is similarly seen as a threat to privacy and national security. ByteDance’s critics have accused TikTok of spreading anti-semitism and promoting pro-Palestinian content. While the youthful nature of its user base would tend to produce a bias towards the Palestinians, comparisons with other social media platforms suggest that bias is materially greater on TikTok than elsewhere.
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