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House lawmakers voted Wednesday to ban TikTok over national security concerns, defying public pressure and concerns about potential free speech violations.
Passed on a 352-65 vote, the bill, HR 7521, now heads to the Senate, where its fate is less clear. (There is no companion bill in the Senate.) President Joe Biden has said he will sign it into law if it lands on his desk.
The legislation would ban the app in the United States if its Chinese-owned parent company, ByteDance, does not divest within five months of the legislation going into effect. Lawmakers have cited concerns that the app could be used to influence public opinion or conduct data surveillance on U.S. citizens. The Chinese government requires companies based there to turn over personal data related to its national security.
Although the House bill had bipartisan support, it also faced strong opposition among lawmakers on both sides. Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., Congress' first Gen Z lawmaker, said he was a "hell no" on the bill. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., also pointed to the "serious antitrust and privacy questions" the legislation raised. And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said the bill would "create a slippery slope for future government censorship of Americans."
TikTok creators had also pushed back on the bill, arguing that a ban on the app, which has approximately 170 million users in the U.S., would have a severe impact on their livelihoods.