TikTok, a Chinese short-form platform, expressed regret over the passage of the U.S. House of Representatives’ “TikTok Compulsory Sale Act (Amendment),” saying it “violated freedom of speech.”
According to Reuters, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance said in a statement on the same day, “It is regrettable that the U.S. House of Representatives once again passed a ban that tramples on the “free speech rights” of 170 million Americans in the name of important diplomatic and humanitarian aid.”
The previous day, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the “Peace through Power in the 21st Century” bill with 360 votes (58 votes against), which includes amendments to the forced sale of TikTok, sanctions on Iranian missiles and drones (unmanned) and oil, and the transfer of seized Russian assets to Ukraine.
The bill is an amendment to the TikTok compulsory sale bill, which was handled by the House of Representatives last month, and calls for ByteDance, the Chinese company that TikTok’s parent company, to sell TikTok’s U.S. business rights within 270 days (nine months). The previous bill had a deadline of 180 days (six months).
It also included that if there is progress in the sale, the U.S. president’s authority can extend the deadline for the sale for 90 days at a time. If the sale is not made within the period, services in the U.S. will be banned.
The bill, which passed the House of Representatives, is expected to pass the Senate this week and be signed by U.S. President Joe Biden. However, Democratic Representative Ro Khanna said in an ABC News interview that the TikTok ban may not survive the court’s legal review, referring to the “free speech protection clause” of the U.S. Constitution.
The U.S. insists on the forced sale of TikTok’s U.S. business rights, saying that China could force ByteDance to share U.S. users’ information. Democratic Senator Mark Warner, chairman of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an interview with CBS News that “TikTok could be used as a propaganda tool for the Chinese government.”
TikTok refutes that it has never shared the information of U.S. users and will not share it in the future. TikTok has about 1.7 billion users worldwide. Among them, the number of monthly active users (MAU) in the U.S. is reportedly about 150 million as of last year.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who owns social media (SNS) X, told X on the 19th, “TikTok should not be banned in the United States. Even if such a ban helps X, it should not be banned,” and opposed the forced sale of TikTok, saying, “Doing so violates freedom of speech and expression, which is not the value the United States seeks.”
In an era of freedom of expression, withdrawing social media businesses that express freedom of expression suppresses freedom. It is discrimination to sell to people other than Chinese. If discrimination occurs due to national security issues, this will be another problem. We will have to think twice about the true meaning of freedom of speech and expression.
JULIE KIM
US ASIA JOURNAL
