The US senate has approved a bill that will see TikTok banned in the US, unless its Chinese owner ByteDance sells its stake in the US arm of the company. The bill has widespread support in the senate, with 79 senators voting for it and only 18 voting against it.
The sitting US president, “Genocide Joe” Biden, has previously said that he’ll sign the bill as soon as it hits his desk.
In a fitting move, the bill was passed alongside bills to provide more military aid to Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan, and other US allies in the indo-pacific region, showing that this is part of a raft of measures designed to bolster US interests.
Over previous months, lawmakers and news media have stoked fears about TikTok having access to vast amounts of data from its US users. How a Chinese company having access to US social media data is supposed to endanger US consumers, nobody has bothered to explain. The fearmongering has proceeded with the underlying assumption that because the company involved is Chinese, there must be some nefarious Chinese government plan at work. This type of fearmongering can only work because constant assertions by US politicians and news media have primed the US audience to think of China as an enemy to the US people.
Viewed realistically, US citizens should be more concerned about their own government getting hold of their social media data, as it has the power to use that data nefariously and also has a history of mistreating its citizens when they don’t bow down to ruling class interests.
TikTok has said that the bill would “trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans, devastate seven million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes $24 billion to the US economy, annually.”
That might be an argument that the US people would listen to but it isn’t like to convince the US ruling class, who recently had the company’s CEO testify in a farcical hearing, where they tried to get the Singaporean man to admit that he was a member of the Communist Party of China and a Chinese citizen.
Clips of the hearing that circulated widely online showcased how ridiculous the US ruling class looks as it goes on its new anti communist witch hunt.