Joe Biden says he will sign bill to force sale or ban TikTok

TikTok’s future looks increasingly uncertain as support grows for a new bill that would force the company to sell itself or face a ban in the United States. Now, President Joe Biden has come out in support of the measure, a day after it cleared its first legislative hurdle in the House.

“If they pass it, I will sign it,” he told CBS News. The bill, called the Protecting Americans from Apps Controlled by Foreign Adversaries Act, introduced earlier this week, would give TikTok has a six-month window to divest from parent company ByteDance or face an app store-level ban in the United States. House Republicans, meanwhile, could bring the bill to a floor vote as early as Wednesday. traffic light .

TikTok said the bill was a thinly veiled effort to force a “total ban” on its app. “This legislation has one predetermined outcome: a total ban on TikTok in the United States,” the company said in a statement earlier this week. “The government is seeking to deprive 170 million Americans of their constitutional right to free speech. This will harm hundreds of millions of Americans.” Thousands of businesses, depriving artists of their audience and destroying the livelihoods of countless creators across the country.”

The company also encouraged millions of users to oppose the measure. On Thursday, ahead of a committee vote on the bill, the app sent a push notification prompting users to call their representatives and ask them to oppose the legislation. The notices reportedly resulted in calls to numerous congressional offices, with staff receiving hundreds of calls from teenagers.

Notably, the bill has another significant opponent: former President Donald Trump. Although Trump also tried to force the sale of TikTok to an American company while in office, the former president said he no longer believed the app should be banned. “Facebook and Zuckerschmuck would double their business if they got rid of TikTok,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social.

While House passage would be a major milestone for the bill, it’s unclear where the Senate stands on it.as traffic light noted that some prominent senators have appeared more cautious in commenting on whether to support the legislation. During a recent Senate hearing on child safety, several senators spoke to TikTok CEO Shou Chew about his own citizenship (he is Singaporean) and the app’s ties to China and its parent company The practice of byte hopping.