The IT Nerd

Over the weekend, The House passed a huge bill that among other things forces TikTok parent company ByteDance to sell the social media company, or face having it banned in the US:

The bill passed with a vote of 360-58 in the House, according to AP. It’ll now move on to the Senate, which could vote on it in just a matter of days. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said today that the Senate is working to reach an agreement on when the next vote will be for the foreign aid package that the TikTok bill is attached to, but it is expected to happen this coming Tuesday. President Joe Biden has previously said he would support the bill if Congress passes it.

This is going put pressure on TikTok. And they’re getting ready for a fight:

TikTok’s head of public policy for the Americas, Michael Beckerman, told staff in a memo after the vote that the bill was unconstitutional and TikTok would fight it in the courts.

“At the stage that the bill is signed, we will move to the courts for a legal challenge,” he wrote in the memo, which was first reported by the tech news website The Information. Beckerman claimed that the bill violated the first amendment of the US constitution, which protects freedom of speech.

“We’ll continue to fight, as this legislation is a clear violation of the first amendment rights of the 170 million Americans on TikTok,” he wrote.

It’s an avenue that TikTok that have used before and they have had success with. I am not a lawyer. But success with this at the state level doesn’t mean that they will have success with the same argument at the Supreme Court. But I am free to be proven wrong.

Get your popcorn ready.

This entry was posted on April 22, 2024 at 8:42 am and is filed under Commentary with tags TikTok. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.