On Wednesday, April 24, the US President Joe Biden signed controversial legislation to force the Chinese parent company of the popular social media platform Tiktok to either sell the app to a US-based company, or be banned in the United States.
The new law is the latest iteration of the ongoing new Cold War against China, dubbing Tiktok a “foreign adversary controlled application.”
This law is part of a larger USD 95 billion foreign aid package to further US imperialist involvement around the globe, sending billions of dollars to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Combined, the legislation passed in the Senate by a landslide yesterday, with 79 in favor and 18 against. The vast majority of the votes against were by ultra right-wing senators who oppose funding for Ukraine. Only three progressive senators voted against the bill: Bernie Sanders, Jeff Merkley, and Peter Welch.
The legislation stands to benefit US-based companies Meta and Google, who are in direct competition with Tiktok in providing a platform for short video content. Although the arguments against Tiktok centered heavily around supposed privacy concerns relating to data potentially being given to the Chinese government, both Meta and Google have documented user data privacy violations.
For the time being, the social media platform is still fully available to users in the US. Now that Biden has signed the bill into law, the outlined terms gives Tiktok’s parent company, ByteDance, 270 days to sell the app to a US company. The president could expand this time frame. Tiktok is expected to challenge the ban in court, potentially on the terms of free speech rights.
