With strong bipartisan support, the U.S. House voted 352 to 65 to pass HR 7521 this week, a bill that would ban TikTok nationwide if its Chinese owner doesn't sell the popular video app.
The TikTok bill's future in the U.S. Senate isn't yet clear, but President Joe Biden has said he would sign it into law if it reaches his desk.
The speed at which lawmakers have moved to advance a bill with such a significant impact on speech is alarming.
In isolation, parts of the argument might sound somewhat reasonable, but lawmakers still need to clear up their confused case for banning TikTok.
Before throwing their support behind the TikTok bill, Americans should be able to understand it fully, something that they can start doing by considering these five questions.
Something that has made HR 7521 hard to talk about is the inconsistent way its supporters have described the bill's goals.
From what lawmakers have said it seems clear that this bill is strongly motivated by content on TikTok that they don't like.
It is indeed alarming how much information TikTok and other social media platforms suck up from their users, information that is then collected not just by governments but also by private companies and data brokers.
This is also why it is hard to take lawmakers at their word about their privacy concerns with TikTok, given that Congress has consistently failed to enact comprehensive data privacy legislation and this bill would do little to stop the many other ways adversaries collect, buy, and sell our data.
The TikTok bill has no specific privacy provisions in it at all.
It has been suggested that what makes TikTok different from other social media companies is how its data can be accessed by a foreign government.
Whether TikTok is banned or sold to new owners, millions of people in the U.S. will no longer be able to get information and communicate with each other as they presently do.
One of the given reasons to force the sale is so TikTok will serve different content to users, specifically when it comes to Chinese propaganda and misinformation.
The TikTok bill's supporters have vaguely suggested that the platform poses national security risks.
So far there has been little public justification that the extreme measure of banning TikTok is properly tailored to prevent these risks.
People in the U.S. deserve an explicit explanation of the immediate risks posed by TikTok - something the government will have to do in court if this bill becomes law and is challenged.
Some have argued that the TikTok bill is not a ban because it would only ban TikTok if owner ByteDance does not sell the company.
Any new ownership will likely bring changes to TikTok.
In 2021, the U.S. State Department formally condemned a ban on Twitter by the government of Nigeria.
If the TikTok bill becomes law, the U.S. will lose much of its moral authority on this vital principle.
This Cyber News was published on www.eff.org. Publication date: Fri, 15 Mar 2024 19:13:07 +0000