The draft resolution was approved by 352 votes to 65 in an unbalanced vote between the two parties, but it faces a more ambiguous path in the Senate, where some prefer a different approach to regulating applications that raise security concerns and are owned by foreign companies.
The political climate is increasingly favorable for the bill, and President Joe Biden said last week that he would sign it.
If the bill is approved, ByteDance will have 180 days to find a buyer.
On this point, Kate Rowan, director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based technology policy think tank that opposes the bill, said: “There are not many entities in this world that have the money it would take to be able to buy something that expensive.” Like TikTok probably.”
She added: “A large deal like this should be subject to antitrust review in the United States, and antitrust merger review, especially in large, complex deals, may take a long time. It will likely be longer than six months.”
For her part, Sarah Krebs, director of the Technology Policy Institute at Cornell University, said that she is skeptical that ByteDance will sell TikTok, adding that China, through the application, “has achieved success around the world, so I am unlikely to sell it,” she said. NBC News.
What happens if the sale doesn't go through?
If the sale does not go through, it could lead to an unprecedented situation in American history where a popular smartphone app used by a large number of Americans would suddenly be banned.
Under the language of the bill, app stores will be prohibited from hosting any banned application, and this applies to Google and Apple.
As a solution to this problem, Cooper Quentin, chief technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit organization that works to promote civil liberties with regard to technology, says that banning “Tik Tok” could push many fans of the application to find alternative solutions.
“I think we'll see a lot of kids learning how to get around the restrictions on their phones,” Quentin explained. “They're certainly not going to stop people from using TikTok by banning it. Yes, it would probably reduce the number of people using it, but this makes it more “Excitement. They will create a new generation of hackers and hackers.”
It also doesn't seem entirely clear how blocking the App Store will work, as both Google and Apple require users to have accounts with their services to use their app stores, and these accounts have several potential ways to determine the user's location.
While app stores may generally categorize a person by country, both companies allow users to change the country they are in, and it is possible to create a second account while visiting another country to make it appear that you are residing there and downloading its applications.
It is also possible to download applications directly onto the phone without going through a store or downloading an “illegal” copy, although it is more difficult to do so on iPhones than on Android phones.
Finally, there are also potential legal issues with the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups arguing that the bill is unconstitutional because it interferes with freedom of expression, among other reasons.
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