After years of working to assure the U.S. government that its popular social media app isn’t a threat to national security, TikTok’s loss in that fight now seems almost inevitable.
The U.S. House of Representatives on Saturday put legislation requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to divest its ownership stake in the app on a fast track to become law, tying it to a crucial aid package for Ukraine and Israel. The Senate is expected to vote on the bill in the coming days. President Joe Biden has said he will sign the legislation promptly.
That action would be an unprecedented move by the U.S. Congress to use legislation to threaten the ban of a large consumer technology platform. If it’s signed into law, ByteDance intends to fight the effort in court and exhaust all legal challenges before it considers any kind of divestiture, people familiar with the matter have said.
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