As per Rubio:

“This isn’t about inventive movies – that is about an app that’s gathering knowledge on tens of tens of millions of American kids and adults every single day. We all know it’s used to control feeds and affect elections. We all know it solutions to the Folks’s Republic of China. There isn’t a extra time to waste on meaningless negotiations with a CCP-puppet firm. It’s time to ban Beijing-controlled TikTok for good.” 

The invoice requires TikTok to be lower off fully within the US, with a purpose to keep away from sharing knowledge with ‘America’s foremost adversary’, with TikTok probably appearing as a surveillance gadget for Chinese language spies.

It’s the newest in a long-running sequence of authorized challenges for the app, which, at one time, was virtually banned within the US fully below the path of former President Donald Trump.

That ban was based mostly on the identical considerations, that the Chinese language-owned app may probably be monitoring data on US customers, and sharing it with the CCP, whereas there have additionally been solutions of algorithmic manipulation to seed pro-China sentiment, whereas additionally suppressing the other.

It’s not even the primary main authorized problem for the app within the US this month.

Final week, the State of Indiana filed a lawsuit which accused each TikTok and father or mother firm ByteDance of violating the state’s client safety legal guidelines, and particularly, failing to safeguard younger individuals, whereas FBI Director Chris Wray,  FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr and Republican senator Josh Hawley have all voiced their considerations across the app’s connections with the CCP in current weeks.

And now, the Home of Representatives will as soon as once more be referred to as upon to overview the app, and determine whether or not it ought to, certainly, be banned within the US.

It’s clearly not new territory for TikTok, however it stays a big menace, possible the largest potential problem to its social media domination – although current numbers have additionally prompt that TikTok’s obtain momentum is slowing of late.

Which, after all, is an apart to the problem at hand, which may see TikTok outlawed within the US, the place, in response to knowledge.ai, it at present has over 111 million energetic customers.

Will that occur? And if it does, how will that change the social media panorama within the US?

Will customers change to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts as a substitute, as they’ve in India, the place TikTok has been banned since 2020, or may it mark the tip of the short-form video development, and lead into the subsequent section of digital connection?

At this stage, it nonetheless feels extra possible that TikTok will stay, however the tide may flip in a short time. One misstep in US-China relations may sink the app’s favorability, very quick, and whereas it’s working to higher display its independence from its Chinese language house owners, particularly with regard to US person knowledge, there’s undoubtedly an opportunity that it is going to be too little too late to keep away from a ban.

Such processes take time, and we possible gained’t have a solution anytime quickly.

We’ll preserve you up to date on any progress.