The Chinese Tiktok plans to challenge the decision in court. The legal battle is likely to be very long.
The hugely popular Chinese video service Tiktok has two options in the US: sell off its US operations or leave the country entirely.
This is what the US Senate decided with a clear majority early Wednesday Finnish time. However, the Chinese company that owns the application chooses the third option and challenges the decision in court.
The House of Representatives hammered through the bill last week. President Joe Biden says he will sign it today.
It was already time to ban Tiktok Donald Trump during his own presidency, but his intention was to join the judiciary. However, the new law coming into force now gives the US administration better capabilities than before to ban or force the sale of foreign applications that are interpreted as security threats.
According to the now approved legal package, Bytedance, which owns Tiktok, should sell the app within about a year at most. Otherwise, Tiktok would be banned from Apple and Google app stores in the US.
It is feared that American information will end up in China
It’s about of The Washington Post including an exceptional dislike for Chinese service. Both Republicans and Democrats have expressed concern about the national security risks associated with the service.
The service has more than 170 million users in the United States. Legislators have been concerned that through the service, US citizens’ data could end up with the Chinese state, and that China could try to influence users through the application.
– For years we have allowed the Chinese Communist Party to control one of the most popular applications in the United States. It has been dangerously short-sighted, said the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, a Republican Marco Rubio in the senate session.
Tiktok is expected to challenge the decision through the courts and the process could become very long. Tiktok has previously opposed the decision citing freedom of speech. Some of the senators who opposed the motion were also concerned about freedom of speech.
The Tiktok line was a small part of the expected decision, in which the Senate pushed through support packages that had been stuck in the House of Representatives for a long time, for example Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
Sources: Reuters, AP, AFP, STT