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Author Topic: Why is TikTok banned? What's behind the law that shuttered the app  (Read 1829 times)

Offline Miss Ifeoluwa

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The 170 million TikTok users in the U.S. were in for a rude awakening late Saturday night when the enormously popular video-sharing app became inaccessible because of a law passed by a bipartisan majority in Congress last year.

TikTok voluntarily shut down service to its users ahead of Sunday's ban. Users in the U.S. who opened the app were greeted with a message with the headline, "Sorry, TikTok isn't available right now."

"A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S.," the message reads. "Unfortunately, that means you can't use TikTok for now. We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!"

TikTok was also no longer available in the Apple or Google Play stores. CBS News has reached out to TikTok for comment.

Lawmakers and U.S. officials have sounded the alarm for years about the supposed risks that TikTok's ties to China pose to national security, and Congress moved last year to force TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell its stake in the app or be cut off from the U.S. market. The law gave the company a deadline of Jan. 19 — one day before a new president would take office.

With no sign of a sale in sight, TikTok's last-ditch legal challenge failed on Friday when the Supreme Court said the law does not violate the First Amendment.

The Biden White House said it will leave enforcement of the law to the incoming Trump administration, and President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to "save" the app. On Saturday, Trump told NBC News he was considering an option to extend the deadline for the law to go into effect.

"The 90-day extension is something that will be most likely done, because it's appropriate," he said in the phone interview, adding, "if I decide to do that, I'll probably announce it on Monday."

The law allows the president, under some circumstances, to grant a one-time extension of up to 90 days regarding the date when the law goes into effect.

TikTok had hinted it would take itself offline, a move that leaves content creators and users in the lurch as the company seeks a way to get back on firm legal footing.

In a statement provided to CBS News Friday evening, TikTok said that the Biden administration had "failed to provide the necessary clarity and assurance to the service providers that are integral to maintaining TikTok's availability to over 170 million Americans. Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19."

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had earlier Saturday called TikTok's latest statement "a stunt."

"We have seen the most recent statement from TikTok," Jean-Pierre said. "It is a stunt, and we see no reason for TikTok or other companies to take actions in the next few days before the Trump Administration takes office on Monday. We have laid out our position clearly and straightforwardly: actions to implement this law will fall to the next administration. So TikTok and other companies should take up any concerns with them."

Why did Congress want to ban TikTok?


U.S. officials have repeatedly warned that TikTok threatens national security because the Chinese government could use it as a vehicle to spy on Americans or covertly influence the U.S. public by amplifying or suppressing certain content.

The concern is warranted, they said, because Chinese national security laws require organizations to cooperate with intelligence gathering. FBI Director Christopher Wray told House Intelligence Committee members last year that the Chinese government could compromise Americans' devices through the software.

As the House took up the divest-or-ban law in April 2024, Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, compared it to a "spy balloon in Americans' phones." Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, said that lawmakers learned in classified briefings "how rivers of data are being collected and shared in ways that are not well-aligned with American security interests."

"Why is it a security threat?" Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said Friday. "If you have TikTok on your phone currently, it can track your whereabouts, it can read your text messages, it can track your keystrokes. It has access to your phone records."

If the Chinese government gets its hands on that information, "it's not just a national security threat, it's a personal security threat," Hawley said.

In 2022, TikTok began an initiative known as "Project Texas" to safeguard American users' data on servers in the U.S. and ease lawmakers' fears. The Justice Department said the plan was insufficient because it still allowed some U.S. data to flow to China.

Though the divest-or-ban law passed with bipartisan support, some lawmakers have been critical of the measure, agreeing with TikTok that it infringes on Americans' free speech rights.

"Most of the reasons the government banned it were based on accusations, not proof," Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said Friday. "[TikTok has] never been tried and found guilty of sharing information with the communist government."

Others have changed their tune as the deadline for a ban neared, including Trump, who tried to ban the app with an executive order during his first term that was struck down in the courts.

"The irony in all of this is that Donald Trump was the first one to point out there's a problem," Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Thursday. Warner said the Trump administration "did a great job of convincing me and overwhelming members of Congress" about the risks.

CBS News










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