Joe Biden said that he would sign a bill that would force ByteDance to divest TikTok or face a ban of the popular app.
“If they pass it, I’ll sign it,” Biden said.
On Thursday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously passed a bill that would compel ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, to sell the social media platform or face having it banned on app stores or web hosting services.
Despite a TikTok effort to rally users to protest the bill to their members of Congress, the legislation appeared to have some momentum later in the day, when House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said that a floor vote would be scheduled for next week.
But the GOP’s presumptive nominee, Donald Trump, warned about the bill. He wrote on his social media platform later on Thursday, “If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business. I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People!”
Trump’s administration previously tried to ban TikTok by forcing a divestiture through executive order, but it was ultimately blocked in the courts.
Backers of the bill deny that the legislation is a ban of the social media platform, which has about 170 million users in the United States. But TikTok has warned that it ultimately is one, and has tried to frame the legislation as one that would restrict its users’ free speech rights.
“This legislation has a predetermined outcome: a total ban of TikTok in the United States,” the company said in a statement. “The government is attempting to strip 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression. This will damage millions of businesses, deny artists an audience, and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country.”
The legislation’s proponents say that it long overdue, charactering it as addressing a national security threat that potentially exposes user data to the Chinese government. TikTok has denied that it hands such data over the Beijing authorities.
Biden’s campaign recently posted its first TikTok video, but Trump’s election effort does not use the platform.
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