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The drama surrounding TikTok’s forced split from Chinese parent ByteDance continues with an eleventh-hour bill that would give the company more time to find a deal. Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts introduced the TikTok extension bill on Monday, which, if passed, would give the company another 270 days to opt out or be forced to shut down in the United States. informed in the news.
According to the law issued by President Biden in April of this year, TikTok was given until January 19 to find a new American owner. The company has so far insisted it is not interested in breaking away from parent ByteDance, although new reports suggest the Chinese government is planning a deal. Sell TikTok to Elon Muskthat would somehow be worse than banning it. After spending $250 million to support Trump’s presidential bid, Musk could see a monumental return on his investment. TikTok quickly denied the news.
TikTok also continues to fight for its survival through the courts, with the Supreme Court hearing oral arguments on the original law last Friday. Although TikTok — along with many of its creators — argued that the ban would be a violation of the First Amendment, the justices looks skeptical. The government has argued that such a ban is necessary for national security reasons and is not a violation of free speech because it seeks to regulate a service, not the content created on that service.
In 2020, gay dating app Grindr was forced to divest from its Chinese parent company after the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) found that data could be used inappropriately to blackmail or intimidate American users. There is no evidence that TikTok’s data is being misused or that the company is trying to sway users’ opinions on any topic, which is one of the reasons the company pushed back against the ban. TikTok has argued that the Chinese government has no control over its operations, although claims that the Chinese government itself is considering a deal for TikTok undermine that notion.
“TikTok has problems,” Senator Markey said on Monday, adding: “A ban on TikTok would have serious consequences for millions of Americans who depend on the app for their social connections and economic livelihoods. We cannot allow this to happen.” has more than 170 million monthly users.
In a case of strange bedfellows, President-elect Trump backtracked completely from his first term when he tried to shut down TikTok. Since then, he has created an account on the app that has garnered more than 14 million followers, and now he wants to stop the ban from being implemented, at least until he has a chance to find a resolution himself. Trump has warned against banning TikTok, saying it will only make Meta more powerful. on good terms These days with CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Meanwhile, TikTok users are hedging their bets by flocking to another Chinese short-form video app. RedNotethis defeats the idea of banning TikTok to protect against Chinese influence. People want TikTok and all its short forms like a pig in a hole.
