President Biden on Friday said that he would support a ban on TikTok if the bill to ban the controversial China-based social media app was passed in the House and Senate.
Biden was asked on Friday, the day after his State of the Union address, if he would sign a bipartisan bill that would ban TikTok if its China-based parent company ByteDance does not divest its stake in the social media platform.
“If they pass it, I’ll sign it,” Biden said.
TIKTOK FACES BAN IN BIPARTISAN BILL IF BYTEDANCE DOESN’T DIVEST OWNERSHIP
Biden’s comments came after the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which was introduced by Reps. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., passed unanimously in a bipartisan committee.
“This is my message to TikTok: break up with the Chinese Communist Party or lose access to your American users,” Gallagher said in a press release. “America’s foremost adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States. TikTok’s time in the United States is over unless it ends its relationship with CCP-controlled ByteDance.”
The bill would require TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to fully divest all of its applications within 180 days or risk a ban on those apps.
It would also establish a process for the executive branch to ban applications in the future if they are deemed a security risk.
The bill would also require designated social media apps to provide users with a copy of their data in a format that can be imported into another app when they leave the platform.
Rep. Krishnamoorthi said that the bill aims to “protect” American users from digital surveillance from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
BILL BANNING TIKTOK APP HEADED TO HOUSE AFTER UNANIMOUS COMMITTEE VOTE
“So long as it is owned by ByteDance and thus required to collaborate with the CCP, TikTok poses critical threats to our national security,” Krishnamoorthi said. “Our bipartisan legislation would protect American social media users by driving the divestment of foreign adversary-controlled apps to ensure that Americans are protected from the digital surveillance and influence operations of regimes that could weaponize their personal data against them.”
TikTok has over 170 million users in the U.S. and the ties between parent company ByteDance and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have raised concerns that the massive social media platform could serve as a propaganda outlet for the CCP, as well as undermine the mental health of users by surfacing addictive or harmful content in their feeds.
A TikTok spokesperson told FOX Business in a statement, “This bill is an outright ban of TikTok, no matter how much the authors try to disguise it. This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs.”
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The company has previously denied that its parent company shares user data with the CCP.
Fox News’ Eric Revell contributed to this report.