Divest Or Face Ban, United States Tells TikTok’s Chinese Owner

Tik Tok, a social media video sharing app might face ban in the United States (US) if the Chinese owner ByteDance fails to divest the U.S. assets.

The U.S House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday that would require the TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the social media platform or face a total ban in the United States.

The vote was a landslide, with 352 Congress members voting in favor and only 65 against. The bill, which was fast-tracked to a vote after being unanimously approved by a committee last week, gives China-based ByteDance 165 days to divest from TikTok.

If it did not, app stores including the Apple App store and Google Play would be legally barred from hosting TikTok or providing web hosting services to ByteDance-controlled applications.

Shortly after the vote, TikTok’s Chief Executive, Shou Zi Chew, said the vote was “disappointing” and that the company would do “all we can” to protect the platform, including “exercising legal rights”.

Chew said TikTok had invested to keep data safe and the platform free from outside influences.

“This bill gives more power to a handful of other social media companies, who will also take billions of dollars out of the pockets of creators and small businesses,” he said in a video message. “It will put more than 300,000 American jobs at risk and will take away your TikTok.”

The Guardian UK says the vote in the House represents the most concrete threat to TikTok in an ongoing political battle over allegations the China-based company could collect sensitive user data and politically censor content. TikTok has repeatedly stated it has not and would not share US user data with the Chinese government.

TikTok faced an attempted ban by Donald Trump in 2020 and a state-level ban passed in Montana in 2023. Courts blocked both of those bans on grounds of first amendment violations, and Trump has since reversed his stance, now opposing a ban on TikTok.