TikTok's Stunt With Congress May Have Backfired

A bill that could lead to a TikTok ban in the US passed a House committee in a 50-0 bipartisan vote Thursday—and it may have had some help from TikTok. Notifications on the app urged users to contact lawmakers about the bill and made it easy for them to directly call their representative's office, leading to a flood of calls as the House Energy and Commerce Committee prepared to debate the legislation, the Wall Street Journal reports. Lawmakers said they didn't like how the Chinese-owned app was manipulating users. "I think TikTok made our case for us today," said GOP Rep. Bob Latta, chair of the committee's panel on communications and technology.

• What's in the bill. The bill, which could soon come up for a vote in the full House, requires Beijing-based ByteDance to divest TikTok and other apps it owns within 180 days or face a US ban, the AP reports. It also creates a process to allow the president to ban foreign-owned apps deemed a threat to national security.

• Beijing isn't happy. The South China Morning Post reports that state media in China slammed the bill as "another show of anti-China forces in the US Congress." Analysts say China is very unlikely to agree to divestment, for reasons of national pride and because the move could add to pressure on other apps, including Temu.
• Bill's author speaks out. "Today, it's about our bill and it's about intimidating members considering that bill, but tomorrow it could be misinformation or lies about an election, about a war, about any number of things," said Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher. "This is why we can't take a chance on having a dominant news platform in America controlled or owned by a company that is (beholden) to the Chinese Communist Party, our foremost adversary." He said Wednesday that the bill should not be viewed as a ban, but as "a surgery designed to remove the tumor and thereby save the patient in the process," NBC News reports.
• TikTok's take on it. In its message to users, the app urged them to "speak up now—before your government strips 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression." A spokesperson described the bill as an "outright ban of TikTok, no matter how much the authors try to disguise it."
• Trump has changed his tune. In 2020, then-President Trump threatened to ban TikTok, Axios notes. But in a Thursday post on Truth Social, he said: "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!"
• The bill's future. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the bill needs work, but President Biden will sign it when "it's on legal standing and it's in a place where it can get out of Congress."

(More TikTok stories.)