US House of Representatives Votes Bill to Ban TikTok

On Saturday, the United States House of Representatives voted a bill which would force to divest from its Chinese parent company ByteDance or be shut out of the American market.

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"It is unfortunate that the House of Representatives is using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance to once again jam through a ban bill that would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans, devastate 7 million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes $24 billion to the U.S. economy, annually," said TikTok in a statement released after the voting.

With more than 170 million users in the United States alone, the app have been accused by Western officials of spying on people for the Beijing's government.

The bill, which could barring the company from operating in the US market, a "free and open market", now goes to the Senate for a vote next week. It passed the House on Saturday with strong bipartisan support, by a margin of 360 to 58.

Under the bill, ByteDance would have to sell the app within a year or be excluded from Apple and Google's app stores in the US, that legislative camera last month approved a similar bill cracking down on TikTok, but the measure got held up in the upper house of the parliament.

In case of the Senate approves it, the bill could gives the US president the authority to designate other applications as a threat to national security if they are controlled by a non-friendly country to the United States.

Elon Musk, the controversial billionaire owner of X, formerly Twitter, came out Friday against banning TikTok, saying it violates freedom of expression. "TikTok should not be banned in the USA, even though such a ban may benefit the X platform," Musk said in a post on X in 2022.