When some users scrolled through TikTok today, they were confronted with a rather alarming pop-up: “Stop a TikTok shutdown,” it says, urging users to “tell Congress what TikTok means to you” with a call button.
The pop-up, which users said they could bypass after closing out of the app and reopening it, comes as the House Energy and Commerce Committee is set to discuss a new bipartisan bill on Thursday. If passed, the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” would leave TikTok with two options: part ways with its Chinese owner, ByteDance, or face removal from app stores in the United States.
“Congress is planning a total ban of TikTok. Speak up now—before your government strips 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression,” the pop-up says. “This will damage millions of businesses, destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country, and deny artists an audience.”
Reached for comment by Fast Company, TikTok said the pop-up reached users over 18 years old, and that the bill violates Constitutional rights. “This bill is an outright ban of TikTok, no matter how much the authors try to disguise it,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement. “This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs.”
The bill, first introduced on Tuesday, is Congress’s latest effort to limit China’s influence on social media users. “America’s foremost adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States,” said Congressman Mike Gallagher, a Republican who introduced the bill alongside Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat. The two are chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the House select China committee.
Supporters of the bill say it is necessary to defend national security by limiting the Chinese Communist Party’s access to Americans’ data. In Congress hearings last year, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified that “American data has always been stored in Virginia and Singapore,” not China. Yet an investigation by Forbes found that financial and personal data from TikTok’s creators, who sign up to get paid through the app, is stored on servers in China and accessible by employees there.
Supporters of the bill also say it will minimize the party’s influence on the content that Americans consume. “From proliferating videos on how to cross our border illegally to supporting Osama Bin Laden’s Letter to America, Communist China is using TikTok as a tool to spread dangerous propaganda that undermines American national security,” House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik said.
The bill is the latest anti-TikTok legislation as similar efforts have picked up steam in the past few months. Montana became the first state to ban TikTok last year, and courts are now evaluating the bill after a judge blocked the ban in November. And last March, senators introduced a bipartisan bill to allow the Department of Commerce to ban information and communications technology services that pose a threat to national security, targeting TikTok in particular.
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