Senate officially bans TikTok in the US, giving it only one way it can stay

The beginning of the end of TikTok in the United States is here as the Senate has passed a bill that bans the ByteDance-owned app from the app store as it's considered to be a piece of software that is controlled by an adversary nation, China.

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The bill was recently passed in the House with 350-58 votes and has now passed in the Senate with 79 votes to 18. Notably, the act was bundled into HR 815, a law that included authorized military funding to support Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. TikTok has been suspected as a surveillance application that is harvesting the data of millions of Americans, which doesn't sit well with many lawmakers, security experts, and the US government, especially considering TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company.

The new legislation deems TikTok a national security risk as the app can scrape the personal data of 170 million Americans, which could then be shared with China's government. The app also has the potential to be used to spread misinformation in the US. However, the legislation gives TikTok one way of staying available in the US - ByteDance sells its share of TikTok to an entity the US government is satisfied with.

If ByteDance sells TikTok it will no longer be controlled by from a foreign adversary, reclassifying it as a safe piece of software. The legistlature gives ByteDance 270 days to sell TikTok, with an addition of a presidential ability to grant a further 90-day extension. The latest ByteDance has to sell TikTok is April, 2025, which would be including the 90-day extension. 270 days from today would be January, 2025.