Why does the United States want to ban TikTok?

The US House of Representatives has voted to force TikTok's Chinese owner to sell the popular video app or risk a ban.

US lawmakers fear TikTok could be used to subvert the upcoming presidential election.

For the second time in four years, the popular Chinese short video app TikTok is in the crosshairs of US lawmakers.

Before the 2020 US presidential election, Donald Trump signed an executive order forcing his owner, ByteDance, to sell the app within 90 days, but it failed due to legal objections. Washington is again trying to force the sale of TikTok with the threat of banning the application nationwide.

On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to force ByteDance to divest itself of the app within six months, or ban it from Apple and Google's app stores. The bill now needs Senate approval to become law. US President Joe Biden has promised to sign it if it passes Congress.

Secret services warn that TikTok is a tool of the Chinese government

Since its launch in 2016, TikTok has become a very popular application in the United States, with some 170 million users. American users spend a lot of time on TikTok: an average of 60 to 80 minutes a day, compared to about 30 to 40 minutes on its main rival, Instagram, according to third-party data.

US intelligence services have warned that TikTok has become a tool of the Chinese government that could be used to undermine democracy in the United States.

The Director of National Intelligence's office warned this week that Beijing's propaganda arm may have targeted Democratic and Republican candidates ahead of the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, and fears the app could be used to disrupt the presidential election. of November.

Under Chinese national security laws, Beijing is also empowered to force ByteDance, which owns TikTok, to provide access to American users' data at any time if that is necessary for intelligence gathering.

TikTok has repeatedly stated that it has never shared US user data with Chinese authorities and will not do so if asked in the future.

The US bill also empowers the president to designate other applications as threats to national security if they are under the control of a country considered an adversary of the United States.

Do the plans have broad support?

The vote passed by an overwhelming majority (352 votes in favor and 65 against) in the House of Representatives, a rare moment of bipartisanship in a politically divided Washington.

"The TikTok ban is one of those rare issues that gets bipartisan support — it's basically a 'tough on China' policy," Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, told his YouTube followers yesterday, Tuesday ( 03/12/2024).

But its fate in the Senate is far from clear, as some lawmakers are reluctant to ban such a popular app in an election year.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warned in a statement that the ban would "violate the First Amendment rights of hundreds of millions of Americans who use the app to communicate and express themselves daily."