TikTok to Fight Back as US Pushes for App's Sale or Ban

TikTok has a lot of reasons to fight, but also it’s made it clear that it is not going to be backing down quietly. Absolutely. And this bill is looking like it’s inevitable that it becomes law. The Senate is meant to take up this bill as soon as tomorrow. But certainly this week, President Joe Biden said he would sign it into law as soon as it passes both chambers. So the fast track to reality of TikTok facing this divest or ban legislation is here now. Bite Dance, Tik Tok’s Chinese parent company, the company that the US government has taken issue with, has also expected that it’s going to fight this tooth and nail through the US legal system. If this bill goes into law. With the current language, Byte Dance would have nine months with a with a potential three month extension to divest the app. But that seems to be an action that would be the case of last resort for Byte Dance, who does intend to draw this out and wage a legal battle that could last more than a year, according to people familiar with the matter. Alex, what’s the plan here? Is it to to weather the storm and and hope for a a better administration somewhere down the track? And also in terms of what’s worse, is it a ban or is it divestment? Well, if you do the math here on that timeline that they would have, let’s say it passes this week, then that would put us right around January, which is inauguration time here in the US as it is a presidential election year. So certainly we’ve seen TikTok in the past try to kind of lean into the idea of patience and looking for a more amenable administration. Donald Trump has changed his tune on TikTok. The man who was the 1st president to try to ban the app by executive order is now saying that it should in fact stay here in the US. So at the moment if this bill does get signed into law with Bloomberg Intelligence puts at a 90% chance of happening, then that might be their best recourse is wait for an administration if Donald Trump gets voted in who is either going to drag out enforcement or might be a little bit more amenable. While they do try to fight this on both First Amendment arguments and otherwise in the American judicial system, Allie says the risk that this has a domino effect as well. I mean, are there, could the US also be looking to ban other Chinese tech platforms? I think TAMU, for instance, sort of seen as an Amazon competitor that’s had a lot of success and the US comes to mind. Yeah, and, and any kind of connection to China has been one that has gotten intense scrutiny. The way this legislation is written is about about basically social media companies who are owned or majority owned by a foreign entity. So that’s scrutiny around that. Chinese ownership has come into play because US lawmakers are worried that because of the regulations in China and how they can request data from companies and that domicile that there could be some kind of risk to Americans. So there is certainly a number of companies, Timu is a great one that comes to mind, that might be concerned not only from what the precedent could be set from this current legislation, but also certainly how other countries might react to have America, who is the home to the biggest social media companies that aren’t TikTok now be saying, hey, look, this needs to be a company that’s not owned by one of our foreign adversaries and potentially a company that’s owned by instead American investors. Alex Byton’s also fighting a battle on 2 fronts across the Atlantic. There’s trouble in the EU as well. What’s going on there? The staring down the barrel of a fine right they are. And it’s not the first time. This is actually the second kind of major moment. TikTok Lite was an app that was launched in both France and Spain within the EU bloc. It rewards users through a point system and the EU regulator opened a new probe on Monday into whether byte Dance violated its content law because they’re worried that this point system might have an addictive effect on users. They have 24 hours to deliver a risk assessment. So we should see potentially some news on this in in the coming days. But it’s not the first time the EU has gotten involved. The EU has previously announced an investigation under the Digital Services Act around the app’s addictive design around screen time limits, privacy settings, age verification. So all that to say, TikTok is waging battles not just on the American front, but certainly in other domiciles where there are either privacy legislation already in place or similar concerns about its ownership and its connection to the Chinese government.