Biden signs TikTok bill into law as Chinese firm threatens legal action

AppleInsider · April 24, 2024 4:05PM

President Biden has now formally signed the bill that means TikTok owner ByteDance must sell the platform, or face being banned in the US from 2025.

TikTok could be banned in the US from 2025

As expected

following the Senate's passing of the combination bill regarding funding for Ukraine and the potential ban of TikTok, President Biden has now signed the measure into law. From today, ByteDance has nine months in which to sell or divest itself of TikTok, although there may be a further three-month extension if a deal is being negotiated.

"The path to my desk was a difficult path," President Biden said in a statement seen by CNBC. "It should have been easier and it should've gotten there sooner."

"But in the end we did what America always does," he continued, "we rose to the moment."

In response to Biden's signing, ByteDance issued a statement say that "this unconstitutional law is a TikTok ban." The company said that it would challenge the law in court.

"This ban would devastate 7 million businesses and silence 170 million Americans," it continued.

The issue for the US government is that TikTok is owned by ByteDance, which is a Chinese company. Senators have cautioned that as such, ByteDance could provide US users' private data to China's government.

ByteDance has denied this. CEO Shou Zi Chew has responded on social media what he says is unmistakably a plan to ban TikTok in the US.

Our CEO Shou Chew's response to the TikTok ban: pic.twitter.com/l0RAPJMobK
-- TikTok Policy (@TikTokPolicy)
April 24, 2024

"It's obviously a disappointing moment, but it does not need to be a defining one," he says in the video. "This is actually ironic, because the freedom of expression on TikTok reflects the same American values that make the United States a beacon of freedom.

Former President Trump has been arguing against banning TikTok. However, he was previously the instigator of the plan to force ByteDance to sell or divest.

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starof80 · April 24, 2024 4:07PM

Bad move on their part

igorsky · April 24, 2024 4:08PM

“We can block every American media company we want, but you can’t block ours because American values”. A clear example of how they try to manipulate our system to their advantage.

pulseimages · April 24, 2024 5:37PM

The Chinese Government aka TikTok doesn’t want to lose the ability to spy on gullible Americans.

thewb · April 24, 2024 5:55PM

What private user data is TikTok sharing with the Chinese government that Facebook (an American company, mind you) hasn't been caught sharing with the Russian government?

hexclock · April 24, 2024 7:31PM

And yet Biden will continue to use it to campaign. Hypocrite.

chasm · April 24, 2024 8:42PM

The only thing China will have learned if they were using TikTok to spy on Americans is that Americans are vacuous, empty-headed nitwits who love cats, putting themselves in danger for views/clicks, and talking about themselves endlessly.*

*Americans who are not on TikTok may or may not fit the profile above.

PS. Nice play by Chump to take both positions.

dewme · April 24, 2024 10:14PM

Sigh... It's starting to feel like the Cold War is making a comeback. Maybe the last 30 years were just a pause. Being part of the generation that fought to end the Cold War makes me shake my head in dismay to see us heading back to a time where the world was so divided and as a country you had to pick one side or the other, align with the East or align with the West. Why do we want to go back to that time? We are all very fortunate that we survived in spite of the massive paranoia, anxiety, and distrust that put the human species on the brink for more than 40 years. Why blow it now?

9secondkox2 · April 24, 2024 10:52PM

Workaround: China will buy or set up an American company and buy tik tok from themselves.

9secondkox2 · April 24, 2024 10:52PM

dewme said:

Sigh... It's starting to feel like the Cold War is making a comeback. Maybe the last 30 years were just a pause. Being part of the generation that fought to end the Cold War makes me shake my head in dismay to see us heading back to a time where the world was so divided and as a country you had to pick one side or the other, align with the East or align with the West. Why do we want to go back to that time? We are all very fortunate that we survived in spite of the massive paranoia, anxiety, and distrust that put the human species on the brink for more than 40 years. Why blow it now?

Good question for China and Russia to answer. They’ve been pretty uppity the last few years.

tmay · April 25, 2024 2:15AM

Long overdue.

Tik Tok has been a proxy for the CCP in influence operations;

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2024/04/how-china-used-tiktok-ai-and-big-data-target-taiwans-elections/395569/

China cultivated TikTok influencers in Taiwan and elsewhere to spread specific disinformation, even as U.S. lawmakers and free-speech advocates debate threats posed by the social-media platform, Taiwanese researchers said Monday.
Beijing has used government-related accounts and generative AI to push fake videos, and used third-party and other data to micro-target messages and influence campaigns to specific individuals. The researchers said China’s efforts in Taiwan provide a glimpse into tactics and techniques they could use on a global scale to undermine support for the U.S. government and military inside and outside the country.
Leading up to Taiwan's election in January, China did “use Taiwanese voices to discredit Taiwan, cultivate official brands or personalities or influencers” to push disinformation streams, Chihhao Yu, a software designer and co-director of the Taiwanese Information Environment Research Center, or IORG, told reporters.
Because many TikTok influencers traffic in disinformation as a simple business practice, IORG wanted to find a stronger link. They looked at influencer-shared content frame by frame and even pixel by pixel to show that the source was likely the Chinese government. Often, groups of influencers across multiple countries might release similar content all at the same time, related to an issue the Chinese Communist Party was trying to influence.
“That's an even stronger signal indicating that these influencers on the site are having at least some kind of coordination with PRC actors,” he said.

Tik Tok is just a fraction of Chinese influence operations.

Buh Bye,,,

danox · April 25, 2024 4:55PM

A nothing burger for two-thirds of the world. The US Government (actually any government worldwide) does not care about the peasants anywhere, Minority Report seems to be their goal no search warrants and fishing trips at will (NSA) and all governments around the world are relentless in its pursuit of this goal. A non-social media user and non crime citizen so far in life not that it matters John Anderton come get me.

https://www.internetsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/IIB-US-EARN-IT-Act.pdf

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2024/04/22/europol-speaks-out-against-end-to-end-encryption/?sh=7d6a545917a2

dewme · April 25, 2024 5:12PM

I completely agree that this is not a US initiated issue by any means. There was a time when China-US relations and even US-Russia relations were far better, more cooperative, and less hostile than they are today. I had a team of developers working in China and regularly visited them and talked with them daily for several years. They were wonderful teammates just like other team members in Singapore, Germany, Canada, and the Czech Republic. I've also worked with teams from Israel, Japan, Brazil, UK, India, Switzerland, Belgium, and South Africa. I've had team members who originated from Iran and Russia. Totally awesome people across the board.

At a fundamental level the vast majority of people everywhere are no different than any of us. They're focused on their families, their communities, and just trying to make the best of their lives regardless of where they live. Doing good and productive things. Unfortunately, we are all affected by our leaders and when our leaders aren't doing the best thing for their citizens and neighbors, or are driven by ideology rather than care and compassion, everyone suffers, sometimes very badly. I am still in shock at how ugly things have gotten between the US and China, and to a lesser extent, the US and Russia. Broken leadership in both cases. To add insult to injury, the deep divides that have been festering in the US for the past several years are turning our own citizens against one another have become such a corrosive and dehumanizing force. As long as leaders and people who adopt the views of their leaders continue to place ideology above humanity we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, but at far greater levels.

kmarei · April 25, 2024 10:16PM

I would much rather the Chinese have my personal data than the US social media companies that have been shown to sell this data to the government.
the risk of the US government having all this data about me is much bigger to me, than the Chinese communist party
i live in the US, not in china

oh and this means we are now imitating china in banning TikTok, since they banned it first
yay freedom!

tomasulu · April 25, 2024 11:01PM

I don’t know about you. All these years, I was never influenced by social media to change my vote. And any news that might influence my vote is on main stream media as well.

Biden signs TikTok bill into law as Chinese firm threatens legal action

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