Senate passes law forcing ByteDance to sell off TikTok – or face a US ban
- Reference: 1713932112
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/04/24/us_senate_passes_tiktok_sale_act/
- Source link:
The bill – formally known as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, or PFACAA as we call it – passed 79 votes to 18 in the Senate on Tuesday US time having [1]earlier been rubber-stamped by the House. The act was bundled into [2]HR 815 – a law that among other things authorizes military funding to support Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.
The act defines just one source of foreign adversary-controlled applications – namely, anything produced by ByteDance, TikTok, or related entities – though it also gives US presidents the power to name more.
[3]
ByteDance and its TikTok unit earned the designation as it is feared the app could ultimately be used by Beijing to manipulate and snoop on Americans and spread misinformation. Chinese social media, by contrast, is largely closed to outsiders.
[4]
[5]
PFACAA makes it "unlawful for an entity to distribute, maintain, or update (or enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of)" such apps, and once signed by President Biden will see a 270-day countdown commence. After that time has elapsed – or perhaps after a single 90-day extension – it will be illegal for an adversary-controlled app to appear in US app stores or be hosted by American service providers. The software will be effectively banned in the United States, though that effectiveness [6]has been questioned .
In any case, the then-illegal app will be forced to hand users "any data maintained by such application with respect to the account of such user, including content (including posts, photos, and videos) and all other account information."
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The act contains an escape clause: A "qualified divestiture" to an entity the US government is satisfied will see the app no longer controlled by a foreign adversary will mean continued operations are allowed. That is to say, if ByteDance can find an approved buyer for TikTok, the application can avoid being banned.
President Joe Biden on Tuesday [8]promised to approve the law on Wednesday – meaning ByteDance has until January 25, 2025, to offload its flagship Western app.
[9]European Commission to suspend TikTok's new rewards program, open second probe
[10]WhatsApp, Threads, more banished from Apple App Store in China
[11]Woz calls out US lawmakers for TikTok ban: 'I don’t like the hypocrisy'
[12]Forget TikTok – Chinese spies want to steal IP by backdooring digital locks
What happens next is unclear. ByteDance's US arm is reportedly considering a legal challenge, while a few potential buyers have expressed interest in acquiring TikTok's operations.
But whether it is possible to fully disentangle TikTok from ByteDance's infrastructure is unknown. And given that some user data is [13]visible to ByteDance workers in China, any buyer would face quite a project to straighten that all out to Uncle Sam's satisfaction.
That's not a bland assertion: The Register has [14]reported on years-old infosec issues that persist in a situation comparable to the divestiture of TikTok – namely the acquisition of Korean messaging app LINE by Yahoo ! Japan.
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Potential buyers of TikTok would surely be considering their appetite for the technical effort that lies before them, and the potential for trouble if they are found not to have completely severed the app from ByteDance.
Your correspondent can imagine writing many, many, stories about failures to get that job right.
And also many stories about the impact of this act on free speech, the open internet, the livelihoods of TikTok developers, implications for US tech companies that – like Oracle – proudly provide IT infrastructure for the app, and even whether this decision could turn the US election.
The last possibility is on the agenda as likely Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump – who as president tried and failed to ban TikTok – is now blaming the app's demise on Biden. That it hasn't actually happened yet is neither here nor there. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/22/us_house_of_representatives_tiktok_bill/
[2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/815/text
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZijYQTWt3L4xvaWttn-1zwAAAFE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZijYQTWt3L4xvaWttn-1zwAAAFE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZijYQTWt3L4xvaWttn-1zwAAAFE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/01/tiktok_ban_white_house/
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZijYQTWt3L4xvaWttn-1zwAAAFE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/04/23/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-senate-passage-of-the-national-security-package/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/23/ec_tiktok_lite_investigation/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/19/whatsapp_threads_ban_china/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/25/woz_tiktok_ban_hypocrisy/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/14/chinese_espionage_safe_locks/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/02/tiktok_china_us_data/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/17/japan_rejects_line_yahoo_security_plan/
[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZijYQTWt3L4xvaWttn-1zwAAAFE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Whelp
A cat may make the pigeons jump, but it rarely catches one.
Re: Whelp
On a side note, pigeon actually looks like a pig that has been evolving for eon times.
Nobody needs $app
'TikTok' could vanish tomorrow and the world would carry on, while someone could sit down and code the next 'TikTok'.
In the end it's just a sad little social media app for people with nothing better to do with their time. Like me, sitting here stabbing this out on a pathetically small phone 'keyboard', as though my opinion is important.
Re: Nobody needs $app
TikTok itself is basically just a clone of Vine, Musk could just bring it back.
Re: Nobody needs $app
Musk has more chance of reviving his dead marriages than Vine. And thats probably more than he has of saving his cybertruck from failing.
Re: Nobody needs $app
while someone could sit down and code the next 'TikTok'.
Coding such an app is just 1-5% of getting there. You need infrastructure and staff to take care of traffic, illegal content, marketing and so on.
That means you also need a massive funding. It's not the 2000s anymore where anyone could launch a service from their basement and manage it.
If you release something like TikTok today, most likely competition will flood it with all sorts of illegal material and keep reporting you for hosting it until service provider kicks you out and you get in all sorts of trouble, that of course on top of DDoS attacks.
Re: Nobody needs $app
Surprised the CIA hasn't funded a competitor to it yet...
Re: Nobody needs $app
It has.....theyre all US based.
OK, let's follow this through then..
.. when will Microsoft, Adobe, Google, Microsoft (etc etc, it's a long list) be forced to sell chunks to European companies because they're spying on EU users? And that's actually not even hard to prove.
It's not that I have any love for China, Tiktok or any other mass software distraction, but the whole argument to force Tiktok to sell stinks of simply a desire to share in their profits or cull any non-US competition more than an actual interest in the safety of the US audience. It simply doesn't stack up logically, so I'm calling BS.
Re: OK, let's follow this through then..
Yep. Meta and Google especially are renowned for hoovering up every bit of data they can, regardless of what a person might have signed up for. And they've been doing it for decades. But apparently it's not as funny when someone else does it.
Re: OK, let's follow this through then..
I really don't understand how forcing a company to sell part of it's operation really changes things.
Just because the "owner" is based in the host country does not change anything in terms of operation. They can still pretty much do what they want.
Re: OK, let's follow this through then..
It makes a difference when the owner is 100% controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
Re: OK, let's follow this through then..
The situation in practice isn't much different with US-owned companies - if the US government tells them to hand over data, they will normally do so and in many cases are legally obliged to.
Re: OK, let's follow this through then..
"The situation in practice isn't much different with US-owned companies ..."
But you fail to see the basic problem. China - bad, pseudo-democratic, spies on the rest of world and its own citizens. US - good, pseudo-democratic, spies on the rest of world and its own ... I guess my argument fails ...
As for the UK - like a good cat, we just work for whoever feeds those with noses in the trough, whichever autocracy they run.
Re: OK, let's follow this through then..
> It is now run by a limited liability company based in Los Angeles and Singapore but is essentially owned by ByteDance. While its founders own only 20% of ByteDance, it's the controlling stake in the company. About 60% is owned by institutional investors, including major US investment firms such as General Atlantic, Susquehanna and Sequoia Capital. The remaining 20% is owned by employees around the world. Three of its five board members are American.
Sauce: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-68681786
Grow up, do better or go home.
"..used ... to ... spread misinformation"
Can't keep a straight face when I read that.
Mother PFACAA
Absolutely classic subheading. Well done.
Mother PFACAA
Classic subheading there. Well done.
Mr Pin, tear down that (fire)wall!
Meh, China bans most western social media services because they're scared of their own population talking about forbidden topics.
A ban on Chinese owned IT services by western countries would at least be fair, even if it's more about the money than the data scraping...
Re: Mr Pin, tear down that (fire)wall!
I love this argument : China is bad because they do $SOMETHING while we're the good guys because we don't do that $SOMETHING. So let's do the same $SOMETHING as China, that'll teach them to be the bad-guys doing $SOMETHING. The exact same argument was used with the Iraq invasion : look, we're not as bad as Saddam Hussein who killed his own fellow Iraqi people, so let's go there and kill the Iraqi people, they should be happy about us killing them instead of Saddam Hussein killing them.
Although Tiktok is probably mostly used by people not old enough to vote yet, i do think Biden has just given Trump a huge jump in the poles with younger voters once he begins to start blaming him for 'banning' Tiktok.
And the way they attach bills like this to funding for military aid for Ukraine, just shows how American democracy isn't all that great either. Its clear Bytedance didn't bribe, sorry 'lobby' enough politicians to stop this happening. Most of them must be on the Meta payroll instead.
I think youre under the misapprehension that young voters see it as a binary choice between a geriatric genocide supporting half dead corrupt shithead and a shit-filled diaper wearing orange sex pest.
Don’t worry, I’m sure this will be the start of regulations on all social media, concerning misinformation and political manipulation, not just ones that happen to come from China! :)
Right?
Whelp
That'll put the cat amongst the pigeons.