The Joe Biden administration signed the House of Representatives bill to ban TikTok this past Tuesday and that now puts the social media platform on the clock to divest from its China-based parent company Byte Dance.
Over the past five days, both chambers of US congress advanced legislation to outlaw TikTok’s presence in US-based app stores tucked into a massive foreign aid package intended to assist Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan.
Previous attempts to ban TikTok have stalled until a recent House Intelligence Committe meeting seemed to convince legislators to move more expeditiously towards banning the social media platform from use in the US based on claims of National Security.
While the contents of the House Intel meeting remain behind closed doors, the House passed along a revised version of the TikTok ban legislation that was originally drafted during the Trump administration, and on Tuesday, the US Senate sent it to President Joe Biden’s desk where he is mostly likely to sign it into law.
The new House bill is intended to force Chinese-based Byte Dance to sell its stake in TikTok over the next nine months, allowing for a preferable sale of the platform to a US-based owner or consortium. The new proposal is similar to its original incarnation back in 2020 under the Trump administration which offered a much narrower window of a six-month divesting period.
At the time, Microsoft was among the top US brands lobbying to be the home for TikTok, with CEO Satya Nadella later admitting that he had no clue of what was really being asked of the Seattle-based software company.
Without a veto from Biden, the ‘TikTok ban’ bill will become law and start the clock on a 9-month window for the social media platform to divest from its parent company Byte Dance which is based in China where US intelligence considered the region a “foreign adversary”.
Biden can offer TikTok an extension to the law that would serve as an additional buffer of a one-time 90-day pause on the banned clock for the platform.
As of Wednesday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew took to social media to clarify the position of the US on banning the social media platform as well as reassuring fans and users that the site is not “going anywhere.”
Chew is signaling to some potentially lengthy court cases that will gum up the works to kick TikTok off of popular social media sites or app stores. In addition, TikTok still can be sold to American company before becoming be fully banned.
Microsoft was originally in the running to acquire TikTok but has not been mentioned again in reference to an acquisition of the social media platform these days.
Furthermore, Microsoft has tied its wagon to the AI-race where the company will face better corporate margins, fewer issues with record labels, content creators, or local and governmental legislative bodies.
While acquiring TikTok would finally help Microsoft ascended to the top of the app store on iOS, Macs, and Android for something other than productivity, the climate for social media platforms has drastically changed, and wouldn’t seem to serve the goals or aspirations of the company in 2025 and beyond.
