TikTok: Focus shifts to bill’s fate in US Senate

“What is getting lost in the debate right now though is that in fall 2020, when Trump was trying to ban the app (as well as WeChat), the Commerce Ministry in Beijing had basically export-controlled TikTok’s algorithm,” he said.

“And so, while folks in the White House and in Congress today are essentially faking a ban on TikTok (there are too many US users to outright ban the app) in order to effectively ensure its forced divestiture here, Beijing will in all likelihood block the sale of the underlying algorithms,” Gupta said.

“And without the algorithms, the question is: Is the American version of TikTok really TikTok if it doesn’t come with the recommendation algorithms? And in that case, is there value in purchasing the shell of TikTok?” he asked. “What happens on Capitol Hill is not the end of this story. Beijing is a player in this drama, too.’’

TikTok, in a statement on Wednesday about the House vote, said its attention would shift to the Senate. It criticized House lawmakers’ fasttracking of the bill and their decision to hold a closed-door briefing for members last week that highlighted the app’s purported national security risks.

“This process was secret and the bill was jammed through for one reason: it’s a ban,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement. “We are hopeful that the Senate will consider the facts, listen to their constituents, and realize the impact on the economy, 7 million small businesses, and the 170 million Americans who use our service.”

The legislation’s proponents argue that the app, immensely popular with teens and young people for its customized song and dance features in short-form videos, poses national security risks.

US officials say TikTok’s Chinese ownership potentially gives Beijing a way to collect data on Americans and to influence public opinion.

ByteDance has said that it hasn’t gotten any such requests from China’s government and wouldn’t comply if it did.

Opponents of the bill said that TikTok has taken steps to address concerns about its ownership, including ensuring all US user data is stored in Oracle cloud software, not overseas, and that fears about the service are overblown.

As president, Trump attempted to ban TikTok or force its sale in 2020 via an executive order, but federal courts blocked that attempt.

He publicly reversed his position on the app over the past week. In a post on Truth Social last week, Trump said that if TikTok were out of the picture, Facebook would benefit, as he attacked the site and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg as an “Enemy of the People’’.

In the Senate, the bill will first go to the Commerce Committee. The Democratic chair of the committee, Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington state, has made no firm commitment to advance the proposal.

“I will be talking to my Senate and House colleagues to try to find a path forward that is constitutional and protects civil liberties,” Cantwell said in a statement to CNN last week.

On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, wouldn’t commit to holding a vote on the House bill, saying he would consult with Democratic committee chairs “to see what their views would be”.

On Tuesday, officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Justice Department spoke with lawmakers in a classified briefing about national security concerns tied to TikTok.

“This bill does not solve our dataprivacy problems and harms innocent users whose very livelihood and existence is supported by this app. Count me out,” said Representative Maxwell Frost, Democrat of Florida, the youngest member of Congress. He is one of several lawmakers who has a TikTok account.

Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, in an opinion piece published Wednesday in The CourierJournal of Louisville, Kentucky, wrote: “I hope saner minds will reflect on which is more dangerous: videos of teenagers dancing or the precedent of the US government banning speech. For me, it’s an easy answer, I will defend the Bill of Rights against all comers, even, if need be, from members of my own party.”

He added: “If you don’t like TikTok or Facebook or YouTube, don’t use them. But don’t think any interpretation of the Constitution gives you the right to ban them.”

Paul also posted on X: “Reactionaries who want to ban TikTok claim the data can’t be secured because the ‘algorithm’ is in China. Not true. The truth is the Algorithm runs in the U.S. in oracle cloud with their review of the code. (NOT in China).”

Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, a vocal critic of TikTok, introduced legislation Wednesday to ban it in the US, which he tried to pass by unanimous consent. Paul objected.

Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner, the chair of the Intelligence Committee, has wanted to ban TikTok for years and introduced his own legislation to do so. He seemed willing to support the House bill, although he said he wanted more time to review it.

“I think there would have been ways when you could have been more certain it would stand up to a legal challenge, but this version may be better than earlier versions,” he said.

A recent poll by The Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 35 percent of US adults saying they would oppose a nationwide ban on TikTok use, while 31 percent say they would support it.