The US Senate has approved a controversial landmark bill that could see TikTok banned in America.
It gives TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, six months to sell its stake or the app will be blocked in the United States.
The bill will now be handed over to US President, Joe Biden, who has vowed to sign it into law as soon as it reaches his desk.
If that happens, ByteDance will have to seek approval from Chinese officials to complete a forced sale, which Beijing has vowed to oppose.
The measure was passed as part of a package of four bills which also included military aid for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and other US partners in the Indo- Pacific.
It got widespread support from lawmakers with 79 Senators voting for it and 18 voting against it.
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It gives TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, six months to sell its stake or the app will be blocked in the United States.
so two weeks before Election Day?
Political instincts so awful it’s amazing the democrats have survived this long.
Nah it was changed to 12 months in the more recent vote.
Probably for that exact reason.
It’s incredible this party has survived so long off of being diet conservatism
All of the stupidity, but with an air of haughty superiority and less obvious racism/sexism/homophobia/etc
If you listen hard, you can hear VPN providers’ eyes turn into dollar signs.
Texans are already giving them a boom
Shut that shit down in the US, get US teens to use VPNs set to not-the-USA so they can keep using TikTok, and thus get a whole generation into widespread VPN use.
Any app that the US government can’t control will be treated this way. That means any app developed outside of the US or its vassals that gets popular enough among Americans. It’s how the US implements its own soft “Great Firewall”.
The bill will now be handed over to US President, Joe Biden, who has said he will sign it into law as soon as it reaches his desk.
If that happens, ByteDance will have to seek approval from Chinese officials to complete a forced sale, which Beijing has vowed to oppose. Analysts say the process could take years.
If any of this is true, this rocks. We’re going to see the US government censor an entire app used by millions of Americans
Right as university campuses around the country are filling with mass demonstrations facing extreme state repression. During what will probably be the hottest year in human history. As all the utility companies face severe supply crunches and the economy is melting down. During 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓂𝑜𝓈𝓉 𝒾𝓂𝓅𝑜𝓇𝓉𝒶𝓃𝓉 𝑒𝓁𝑒𝒸𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃 𝑜𝒻 𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝓁𝒾𝒻𝑒𝓉𝒾𝓂𝑒𝓈.
I could see it prompting a Certified 1968 Moment if/when things get worse this year. I don’t know how it would compare to the BLM protests of 2020 but this decision was bad.
It will be late October before when this takes effect, unless he ponders it some. He has what, 10 days? So he’s going to piss off all the young people 2-12 days before the election.
How the fuck did Tiktok become the focus of the third (fourth? Who even knows) red scare?
Alternative media is normally recuperated into another generic ideological state apparatus. They control every other platform that’s popular with the youngsters. Tiktok is the only one where the algorithm doesn’t immediately punish you for being a leftist and the mods/admins can’t shape what that word means in direct line with the US government. Now our lying eyes can’t deceive us.
Media is extremely important to control.
A social media site that isn’t ENOUGH of a 4chan clone? That’s a threat to national security!
zionists dont have full control of TikTok like they do Meta and Twitter apps, and that just won’t stand.
This is so dumb what a dumb fucking joke of a country
Literally “China is making me take your treats away” policy
Its not just tiktok, far from it but the future is terrifying. I genuinely hate living here
Genocide Joe needs to keep those kids from seeing how much he loves murdering children. At least nothing bad could happen when it’s purchased by far-right Trump cabinet members.
May we all perish in the wrathful fires of the Zoomers.
I’m assuming a ban would be implemented by removing TikTok from US app stores. If so, there is a workaround on both iOS and Android: create an alternate iCloud or Google account based in a non-US country and download/update TikTok through that account. Once downloaded, your phone will display and let you use apps from multiple regions.
On the Play Store, it’s as easy as switching accounts in the Play Store app (tap your profile in the upper-right). On iOS, it’s more annoying, as you need to fully sign out of iCloud on your phone, which resets things like Apple Pay, but it can be done every few months to pull updates.
Android users might be able to just use FDroid and download that way as well
Given the fact that side loading apps is easy on android and functionally not possible on iOS in the US, this style of ban may actually drive young people away from iOS when they see their Android-using peers still using TikTok unimpeded.
And that’s only if you don’t already have it downloaded. I wonder if a VPN will be needed in order to use the app, but it’s not like ByteDance will just block US IPs, why would they, so you’d have to block it at the ISP level.
I have a suspicion that if this passes, the US govt will pressure the EU to remove it from their store.
Maybe? I doubt it, at least not yet… EU is decidedly more reserved in being anti-China and still postures itself less aggressively than the US. There’s a reason that the EU is full of Chinese cars and the US is not, for example.
However, EU already decided long ago and especially in the past few years, e.g. in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, to join the US in maintaining the old US-dominant world order, rather than work with the BRICS+ countries to build a new one. So at some point, if EU is serious about being pro-US, they will have to actually oppose China, not just pay lip service.
Potential? Only the parliamentarian could stop this
Can’t ByteDance just do what other companies do, declare that it’s technically based in the Canary Islands and is therefore not Chinese?
It has nothing to do with China, really. That’s just the excuse. The real reason for the ban is that Tiktok is becoming a hub for pro-Palestinian anti-genocide content. No amount of legal-location tricks will stop the US government from trying to kill Tiktok so long as it refuses to implement pro-Israel censorship.
no, for obvious reasons
Their current setup should already do exactly that. Tiktok is based in Singapore, not China.
