The House of Representatives panel approves a bill that could lead to a total ban on TikTok in the US

Another day, another political hurdle for ByteDance-owned app TikTok.

On Wednesday (March 1), the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to introduce a bill that would give President Joe Biden the power to ban TikTok in the US.

As reported Here by CNN, the bill, known as Deterring America’s Technological Adversaries Act, would also allow scrutiny of other China-related economic activities if signed into law.

The bill would need to be passed by the Republican-led House of Representatives and the Democratic-led Senate before it can become law.

The bill, sponsored by the Republican Legislature and Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee Michael McCaul passed by a Republican vote of 24 to 16 Democrat.

CNN quotes McCaul said on Tuesday: “TikTok is a modern day Trojan horse of the [Chinese Communist Party] used to monitor and exploit Americans’ personal information…in other words, it’s a spy balloon in your phone.”

Democrat Gregory Meeks reportedly called the bill “unexamined and dangerously excessive,” citing the impact it would have on chipmakers in Taiwan and Korea.

The bill’s passage comes just days after the White House Office of Management and Budget issued a 30-day deadline for the app to be removed from federal employees’ devices over national security concerns.

On Monday (February 27), Canada also announced the ban on TikTok from all government-issued devices.

“I suspect that when the government takes the significant step of telling all federal employees that they can no longer use TikTok on their work phones, many Canadians, from businesses to individuals, will begin to think about, and perhaps make decisions about, the security of their own data.” ‘ was Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau quoted until Associated Press as said.

Meanwhile, the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, banned its employees from using ByteDance’s video app on their work phones last week for security reasons.

Also the European Parliament forbidden discourage its employees from using TikTok this week.

TikTok has around 100 million users in the USA.

Back in September 2020, when the prospect of a temporary U.S. ban on TikTok by the Trump administration made headlines, the app’s then-interim head (now COO) was Vanessa Pappas appreciated that when a US ban on TikTok was in effect for six months, over 80% of its daily users would not return to the platform.

This prediction was based on TikTok’s real-life experience of being banned for a fortnight by the Indian government in 2019. according to Reuters.

“A US ban on TikTok is a ban on the export of American culture and values ​​to the more than 1 billion people who use our service worldwide,” said a spokesman for TikTok told CNN in a statement.

“We are disappointed that this hasty legislation is moving forward, despite its significant negative impact on the free speech rights of millions of Americans who use and love TikTok.”

The American Civil Liberties Union also spoke out on Wednesday against the further development of the draft law.

Jenna Leventoff, Senior Policy Counsel at ACLU, said: “We are disappointed that the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to pass a bill that would effectively ban TikTok in the United States, violating the rights of Americans in the United States of the First Amendment. We urge lawmakers to vote no to this vague, overblown, and unconstitutional bill.”music business worldwide