U.S. lawmakers voted 50-0 to force the sale of TikTok, alleging that the app’s links with the Chinese Communist Party pose significant threats to national security. The House Commerce Committee approved a bill that would require ByteDance (TikTok’s owner) to sell the company within 180 days or risk losing access to the U.S. market.

The goal of the legislation is to address immediate risks posed by TikTok and to establish a framework to protect Americans from what it deems future foreign adversary-controlled applications. If the bill becomes law, TikTok would be removed from app stores and lose access to U.S.-based web hosting services if it is not sold to a buyer that is acceptable under the regulation. The bill sponsor clarified that it is a divestiture, not a ban, emphasizing that it puts the decision in TikTok’s hands to sever ties with the Chinese Communist Party. TikTok is calling this a distinction without a difference.

Is TikTok a threat to national security? If so, how? Could the Chinese government use the data that TikTok collects in a more harmful way than the profit-motivated engagement algorithms used by every other app (regardless of national origin) where engagement is a key metric?

I have a long list of questions about this (all technical, not political), but I’m interested to hear your thoughts. Is this a ban disguised as divestiture? If the bill becomes a law, will it be effective? Do we really think the Chinese government needs its own app to sow the seeds of misinformation or obtain behavioral data? Are there other dangerous apps? Are there apps owned by “approved” businesses in approved countries who share or sell the same data to China now? How would this bill stop that data flow?

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