Biden Signs Bill to Ban TikTok Amid Security Concerns
US President Joe Biden has authorized a bill aimed at prohibiting the social media platform TikTok within the country. The legislation, previously approved by both the Senate and the House of Representatives, forbids the sale of the application in Apple and Google stores.
The ban on TikTok will come into effect if its parent company, ByteDance, fails to divest its American operations to another entity within nine months. This timeline may be extended by an additional three months should progress be made toward completing the transaction.
Advocates for the ban argue that TikTok poses a national security risk to the United States, suggesting that the Chinese government could exploit ByteDance’s ties to obtain personal data of American users. ByteDance has faced scrutiny in various countries over alleged ties to the Chinese government and accusations of political censorship.
TikTok, with approximately 170 million American users, has denied sharing user information with the Chinese government and claims to have never received such requests. In an attempt to address security concerns, TikTok partnered with Oracle Corporation in 2020 and began storing user data in the United States using the cloud infrastructure of an American company.
