TIKTOK BILL HITS SNAG IN US SENATE
The TikTok bill — passed by the House of Representatives this month — is already running into roadblocks in the Senate, where there is little unanimity on the best approach to ensure that China does not access private data from the app’s 170 million US users or influence them through its algorithms.
Other factors are holding the Senate back. The tech industry is broad and falls under the jurisdiction of several different committees. Plus, the issues at play do not fall cleanly on partisan lines, making it harder for lawmakers to agree on priorities and how legislation should be written.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Maria Cantwell, DWash., has so far been reluctant to embrace the TikTok bill, for example, calling for hearings first and suggesting that the Senate may want to rewrite it.
“We’re going through a process,” Cantwell said. “It’s important to get it right.”
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., a former tech executive who is also supporting the TikTok bill and has long tried to push his colleagues to regulate the industry, on the other hand, says the House bill is the best chance to get something done after years of inaction: “It makes the point; do we really want that kind of messaging being able to be manipulated by the Communist Party of China?”
Some lawmakers are worried that blocking TikTok could anger millions of young people who use the app, a crucial segment of voters in November’s election.
But Warner says “the debate has shifted” from talk of an outright ban a year ago to the House bill which would force TikTok, a wholly owned subsidiary of Chinese technology firm ByteDance Ltd., to sell its stake for the app to continue operating.
Vice President Kamala Harris, in a television interview that aired Sunday, acknowledged the popularity of the app and that it has become an income stream for many people. She said the administration does not intend to ban TikTok but instead deal with its ownership.
“We understand its purpose, and its utility and the enjoyment that it gives a lot of folks,” Harris told ABC’s “This Week.”
Republicans are divided. While most of them support the TikTok legislation, others are wary of overregulation and the government targeting one specific entity.
“The passage of the House TikTok ban is not just a misguided overreach; it’s a draconian measure that stifles free expression, tramples constitutional rights, and disrupts the economic pursuits of millions of Americans,” Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul posted on X, formerly Twitter.
Hoping to persuade their colleagues to support the bill, Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee have called for intelligence agencies to declassify information about TikTok and China’s ownership that has been provided to senators in classified briefings.
“It is critically important that the American people, especially TikTok users, understand the national security issues at stake,” the senators said in a joint statement.
Blumenthal and Blackburn have separate legislation they have been working on for several years aimed at protecting children’s online safety, but the Senate has yet to vote on it. Efforts to regulate online privacy have also stalled, as has legislation to make technology companies more liable for the content they publish.
And an effort by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to quickly move legislation that would regulate the burgeoning artificial intelligence industry has yet to show any results.
Schumer has said very little about the TikTok bill or whether he might put it on the Senate floor.
“The Senate will review the legislation when it comes over from the House,” was all he would say after the House passed the bill.
South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, a Republican who has worked with Schumer on the artificial intelligence effort, says he thinks the Senate can eventually pass a TikTok bill, even if it is a different version.
He says the classified briefings “convinced the vast majority of members” that they have to address the collection of data from the app and TikTok’s ability to push out misinformation to users.
“I think it’s a clear danger to our country if we don’t act,” he said. Rounds says he and Schumer are still holding regular meetings on artificial intelligence, as well, and will soon release some of their ideas publicly. He says he’s optimistic that the Senate will eventually act to regulate the tech industry.
“There will be some areas that we will not try to get into, but there are some areas that we have very broad consensus on,” Rounds says.