US President Joe Biden has said that he will sign a bill that could lead to a ban on video hosting service TikTok in the country.
US President Joe Biden said on Friday he would sign legislation that gives Chinese company ByteDance about six months to divest from popular short video-sharing app TikTok.
The US House of Representatives plans to vote on a bill to ban TikTok on Tuesday (13 March) or Wednesday (14 March) next week after a committee on Thursday unanimously approved the measure.
Donald Trump has spoken out against the TikTok ban, saying on social media, “If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook… will double their business,” and added he does not want Facebook “doing better.”
Republican Senator Rand Paul, who has previously blocked efforts to speed up the TikTok ban, was reacting to Trump’s statement, which said the former president had helped solve the problems of American TikTok users as part of the company’s $1.5 billion project.
“If Congress bans TikTok, they will be acting just like the Chinese communists who have also banned TikTok… Why not just defend the first amendment?”
The bill would give ByteDance 165 days to opt out of TikTok. If it fails to do so, app shops operated by Apple, Alphabet’s Google and others will not be able to legally offer TikTok or provide web hosting services for apps controlled by ByteDance.
TikTok, which says it does not and will not share US user data with the Chinese government, argues that the House bill amounts to a ban.
