Congress is ordering Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores by Jan. 19. In a letter to the tech giants, lawmakers said they must comply with a soon-to-be-enacted law requiring parent company ByteDance to divest the video app or essentially be banned in the United States.
That law was signed by President Joe Biden in April 2024 and was upheld unanimously by an appeals court. It states marketplaces cannot distribute, maintain or update TikTok, effectively impacting both new and existing users.
If ByteDance decides to divest, the deal must be approved by the U.S. government. Additionally, the president can grant a 90-day extension if the company is making progress on a sale.
“Congress has acted decisively to defend the national security of the United States and protect TikTok’s American users from the Chinese Communist Party,” lawmakers said in a letter to TikTok CEO Shou Chew. “We urge TikTok to immediately execute a qualified divestiture.”
TikTok is considered a national security threat because parent company ByteDance is based in China, which has a law requiring companies to assist the government when asked. The Chinese Communist Party could require TikTok to distribute misinformation to its 170 million U.S. users, collect personal data on Americans or install malicious software on users’ cellphones.
TikTok argued in court that banning the app violates the First Amendment. The court ruled that the law actually protects free speech from a foreign adversary nation and limits that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States. The court rejected all of TikTok’s constitutional claims.
Anyone who already uses TikTok in the U.S. won’t lose access to it on Jan. 19, but they won’t be able to update the app anymore, which will eventually make it incompatible with their phone’s operating system and unworkable.
President-elect Donald Trump said he wants to prevent a TikTok ban but has not offered details as to how he would do that.
“I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” Trump told reporters Monday, Dec. 16.
The law takes effect the day before he’s sworn in.
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