UNDER SCRUTINY
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 United States.
The House of Representatives last month approved a similar Bill cracking down on TikTok, but the measure got held up in the Senate.
Steven Mnuchin, who served as US treasury secretary under former president Donald Trump, has said he is interested in acquiring TikTok and has assembled a group of investors.
TikTok has been in the crosshairs of US authorities for years, with authorities saying the platform allows Beijing to snoop on users in the United States.
But a law banning it could trigger lawsuits. This Bill gives the US president the authority to designate other applications as a threat to national security if they are controlled by a country deemed hostile.
Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, formerly Twitter, came out on Friday against banning TikTok, saying it went against 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 the social network he acquired in 2022.
“Doing so would be contrary to freedom of speech and expression,” said Musk.
