(The picture comes from the Internet)
A new bill for TikTok to divest bytes has officially become law in the United States.
Following the last TikTok stripping bill that was still on hold in the U.S. Senate, on April 24, local time in the United States, U.S. President Joe Biden signed a new bill that included a requirement for TikTok to divest ByteDance.
The new bill took only four days from the Senate proposal to Biden to sign into law. In addition to TikTok's divestment requirements, the main body of this new bill is a total of $95 billion in foreign aid package packages, including military assistance for Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific including China's Taiwan region, humanitarian assistance for the Palestinian Gaza region, and sanctions against Russia and Iran.
The new bill requires ByteDance to sell all of TikTok's shares by Jan. 24, 2025, or about nine months. In addition, the then-president had the power to extend the sale for another 90 days to April 24, 2025. If TikTok does not sell a stake in Bytes for about a year, TikTok will be banned from listing in the United States.
The social media dilemma in the context of geopolitical issues
According to the U.S. law entry into force process, after passing the House of Representatives and Senate, the divestiture bill becomes law once signed by the President of the United States.
According to the law, TikTok will not be able to list on Apple's and Google's app stores if it does not sell its stake, and the 170 million U.S. users who have downloaded TikTok will still be able to use the product, but TikTok will not be able to update any features or fix product problems.
At 11:01 p.m. on April 24, U.S. time, TikTok issued a statement through its X account, TikTok US, saying that this unconstitutional order is a ban on TikTok and that we will resort to the courts. We believe that facts and laws will be on our side, and TikTok will win in the end. The statement also said the ban would destroy 7 million businesses and silence 170 million Americans.
After the bill was signed, Christopher Wray, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), who has long opposed TikTok, said on the program of NBC that in his view, TikTok is a symbol of the threat to national security in the United States, and the data, recommendation algorithms and software systems in TikTok's possession will continue to endanger the national security of the United States.
However, the U.S. government has not received actual evidence to substantiate these security allegations. Some industry lawyers said that the accusations against TikTok have gone beyond the scope of the law.
At the same time, social media research experts say that one of the reasons why the U.S. Congress banned TikTok is that TikTok involves the control of public opinion, and its content is affecting the United States. In particular, the Israeli-Palestinian war and the Russia-Ukraine war, which have been controversial among the American people recently.
TikTok's influence on the masses is evident in the attitude of the Biden campaign.
On Feb. 11, the Biden campaign released its first TikTok video on the day of the Super Bowl in the United States, which received more than 10 million views.
Recently, an official of the Biden campaign said that the stakes are high and that we will use all tools to win the support of young voters. TikTok is an effective communication tool to reach young voters, and at the same time, we have strengthened security measures when using TikTok.
Both the need for TikTok's communication power and influence, and the need to ban TikTok, the unbalanced balance of the U.S. Congress has put TikTok in an embarrassing situation.
Will TikTok US be sold?
After Biden signed the bill, there was a lot of discussion about the possibility of a sale of TikTok's shares and who would be the next buyer.
A number of American business tycoons have revealed that they have formed a consortium to acquire TikTok, including former Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, short video platform Rumble CEO Chris Pawlowski, American star investor Kevin Ollie, former US Treasury Secretary/banker Steven Mnuchin, etc.
However, TikTok's current valuation has reached $1000-180 billion, and the financial resources needed to acquire such a large company are very challenging.
A number of financially powerful American business giants have also thrown olive branches to TikTok, such as Microsoft, Oracle, Walmart, Apple and X (formerly Twitter). However, the acquisition of a company of TikTok by these business giants will inevitably face global antitrust challenges, which will also lead to a high probability that the acquisition will not be carried out.
At the same time, TikTok has formed a global operating system, and TikTok in the United States and TikTok in Europe, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and other regions share resources at many levels. If you want to sell a market separately, it is as difficult to divest as it is to sell.
In addition, as early as August 28, 2020, China's Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Science and Technology adjusted and released the "Catalogue of China's Export Prohibition and Restriction Export Technologies", adding the category of "Personalized Information Push Service Technology Based on Data Analysis" related to ByteDance's algorithm. Therefore, the sale of TikTok will involve the issue of China's technology exports, which also adds a lot of complexity to the sale.
At the same time, at 10:20 p.m. on April 25, ByteDance issued a statement through its official headlines: Foreign media news about ByteDance's exploration of selling TikTok is untrue, and ByteDance does not have any plans to sell TikTok.
ByteDance plans to choose to face this scorching sensation head-on, and strive for TikTok's survival opportunities and space in the U.S. market through lobbying, legal and other means.
According to the latest bill, TikTok can file a lawsuit within 165 days of the bill's passage.
(The picture comes from the Internet)
Choose "hard", and the TikTok turmoil will not stop
In the past series of turmoil, TikTok has turned the tide in the United States, but this time TikTok is facing a more severe situation.
In May 2023, the U.S. state of Montana planned a statewide ban on TikTok, which was eventually blocked by a state judge on the grounds that the U.S. First Amendment impairs free speech.
According to public information, TikTok will still file a lawsuit in court for harming users' freedom of speech based on the First Amendment of the United States.
Data shows that TikTok currently has 170 million users in the United States, and as of June last year, TikTok content creators with more than 5,000 fans reached 136,000.
TikTok and its supporters argue that "sell TikTok or ban it" violates the Constitution's First Amendment right to free speech, and argues that this requirement does not violate the First Amendment, because "the First Amendment protects free speech, not the right to operate a particular platform, and as long as new buyers continue to operate, users' free speech will not be affected." ”
In any case, it is foreseeable that this case will rely on the First Amendment. However, given the current international tensions, and the scale of the injunction litigation that covers the entire United States, the final outcome of the court is uncertain.
Lawyer Xue Ying, who specializes in international cybersecurity and anti-monopoly, analyzed to Titanium Media's "Overseas Reference", "The bill has become law as soon as it is signed by the president, but whether the effect will be effectively challenged so that the implementation will be suspended or declared invalid depends on how the court determines whether to give an injunction to stop the implementation of the law in the lawsuit that TikTok claims to file." ”
"To obtain a temporary injunction, TikTok will also need to demonstrate that failure to issue a ban will result in irreparable damage. But beyond the political factor, the lawsuit also faces potential legal difficulties. Unlike Montana's bill to ban TikTok outright, the new bill passed quickly by the House and Senate is a conditional ban, not an outright ban on TikTok, and it is uncertain whether the move will be found to be a First Amendment violation. Xue Ying concluded.
This uncertainty will keep the pending lawsuit entangled for a certain amount of time, which may buy time for TikTok's normal operations in the United States, but it will also keep TikTok in turmoil and damage its business ecosystem. ByteDance and TikTok will experience a longer period of political and commercial scorching.
Jules Terpak, a TikTok tech blogger with 3.5 million followers, said that even if this bill doesn't pass, I expect the topic of banning TikTok to keep coming up. Unless TikTok is actually sold or blocked, the debate will not stop.
Author|甚平
Editor|Yang Xiujuan