US adopts ultimatum that could ban TikTok in the country

A The upper house of Congress approved on Tuesday night, by a majority of 79 votes against 18, the proposal, which had already received the green light from the Chamber of Representatives, the lower house of the US Congress.

The video platform, owned by ByteDance, is accused by North American officials of allowing Beijing to spy on and manipulate 170 million users in the United States.

Shortly after approval, US President Joe Biden announced that he would promulgate the text today.

If it comes into effect, ByteDance will have nine months to sell the application and obtain a possible extension of three months if the deal is ongoing, otherwise it will be excluded from Apple and Google stores in North American territory.

On Saturday, the TikTok said that a possible ban on the platform in the United States would “violate the freedom of expression” of 170 million people and warned that it was preparing legal action to block the legislation.

A spokesperson for the application added that the law would “devastate seven million companies and close a platform that contributes 24 billion dollars a year to the North American economy”, in an email sent to the French news agency. Press.

The possible banning of Tik Tok was one of the counterparts accepted by Democrats to obtain support from Republicans for a new military aid package worth 61 billion dollars (57 billion euros) to Ukraine.

The package had as its counterpart several other Republican priorities, such as proposals that allow Washington to confiscate frozen assets from the Russian central bank to rebuild Ukraine, impose sanctions on Iran, Russia, China and criminal organizations that traffic the synthetic drug fentanyl.

In late March, Taiwan declared TikTok a “threat to national security” due to “substantial control” by “hostile foreign actors” over the platform.

TikTok was already banned for public bodies, something that was extended to educational organizations, non-governmental organizations, as well as other areas and sectors in Taiwan.

On Monday, the European Commission opened an investigation into the new TikTok Lite application and threatened to suspend, from Thursday, the feature that rewards screen time, due to the risk of increasing addiction.

With short videos, TikTok, which has attracted more than 1,5 billion users worldwide, has been accused for several years in the United States and Europe of causing addictive behavior among teenagers.