Sapna Maheshwari, David McCabe and
Sapna Maheshwari reports on TikTok. David McCabe and Cecilia Kang cover tech policy.
“Just over a year ago, lawmakers displayed a rare show of bipartisanship when they grilled Shou Chew, TikTok’s chief executive, about the video app’s ties to China. Their harsh questioning suggested that Washington was gearing up to force the company to sever ties with its Chinese owner — or even ban the app.
Then came mostly silence. Little emerged from the House committee that held the hearing, and a proposal to enable the administration to force a sale or ban TikTok fizzled in the Senate.
But behind the scenes, a tiny group of lawmakers began plotting a secretive effort that culminated on Wednesday, when President Biden signed a bill that forces TikTok to be sold by its Chinese owner, ByteDance, or risk getting banned. The measure, which the Senate passed late Tuesday, upends the future of an app that claims 170 million users in the United States and that touches virtually every aspect of American life.
For nearly a year, lawmakers and some of their aides worked to write a version of the bill, concealing their efforts to avoid setting off TikTok’s lobbying might. To bulletproof the bill from expected legal challenges and persuade uncertain lawmakers, the group worked with the Justice Department and White House.” . . . .
I’m not sure this is a good idea. Read what Tim Wu, law professor, wrote in his columns in the NYT. I’m afraid it was text buried in an article about a different main topic. One of his main ideas was, we shouldn’t single out Tik Tok, but make all the social media companies clean up their acts. I am in an awkward position. I agree with Tim Wu, or whoever it was, that this bill is wrong. Tik Tok is already more regulated than our other social media companies. My own thought is that we should be forcing the sale or barring Tik Tok, for a different reason. If the Chinese ban all or most of our social media companies in China, we should reciprocate, and ban theirs. InconvenientNews.net
InconvenientNews.Net 