2024 "TikTok" Bill / Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act

Overview

The 2024 "TikTok" Bill refers to the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which is a bill introduced in the United States House of Representatives in March 2024 that would require TikTok to divest itself completely from Chinese parent company ByteDance or face a ban on app stores in the U.S. The bill was passed by the Senate and signed by Joe Biden on April 24th, 2024. The bill was praised by some and caused concern among other social media users. Similar to previous events involving the potential banning of TikTok in America, the bill garnered widespread media coverage, discourse and memes online.

Background

On March 5th, 2024, Wisconsin representative Mike Gallagher, a Republican, introduced the "Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,"^[1] which essentially requires TikTok owners ByteDance to divest from the app lest it face a ban in the United States. The introduction of the bill prompted President Joe Biden to voice his support for it, indicating that if it makes it to his desk, he will sign it.

Several politicians voiced their opposition to the bill, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman (Bowman's TikTok voicing his opposition shown below).

Notably, Donald Trump was among those who opposed the bill, though he supported his own ban during his time as President back in 2020. Trump said TikTok stood in the way of Meta from monopolizing the short form video space, and deemed Meta an enemy of America.^[2]

Developments

On March 13th, 2024, the United States House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of passing the bill, 352-65.^[2] As of March 13th, the bill still needs to come to the U.S. Senate floor for a vote, and even then it is unclear if the bill would pass.

On social media, users debated whether the bill should be passed. For example, on March 13th, Twitter / X user @MichaelTracy^[3] argued that the real reason Congress wants to pass such a bill is because it is a major news app for younger Americans and is not controlled by an American organization, gaining over 8,000 retweets and 17,000 likes in one day (shown below, left). That same day, Twitter user @AGHamilton^[4] argued that the bill's critics were mischaracterizing it, as the bill was not an outright ban on TikTok but an effort to get the app divested from its foreign owners in China, gaining over 150 retweets and 640 likes in a similar timeframe (shown below, right).

On TikTok, discussion of the bill centered on concern and dispelling misinformation surrounding it. On March 12th, 2024, TikToker Carterpcs explained that the app was not getting "banned" in the upcoming vote. The video gained over 585,000 views in one day (shown below, left). The same day, user @connorhessee posted a video joking about people who didn't realize that the vote was not a ban, gaining over 283,000 views in the same timeframe (shown below, right).

Bill Passes Senate And Becomes Law

On April 23rd, the United States Senate passed the bill as part of a larger foreign aid and national defense package which funded aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Joe Biden signed the large package of bills the next day. The bill which Biden signed was similar to the one passed by the House in March 2024, but it altered the timeline of the forced sale: Instead of six months, Bytedance was given 9 to 12 months to sell TikTok to an American company.^[5]

TikTok and organizations like the ACLU are expected to challenge the ban in courts, which will likely delay its implementation. Legal action stopped Donald Trump's 2020 TikTok Ban. In a post on the @tiktok account on April 24th, CEO Shou Zi Chew promised to fight the ban. His post (seen below) earned over 800,000 likes and 4.7 million views in four hours.^[6]

Search Interest

External References