The House passed legislation that would ban TikTok if its parent company doesn’t sell its stakes in the social media platform within six months of the bill’s enactment. If ByteDance chooses to divest its stakes, TikTok would continue to operate in the U.S. if the President determines “through an inter-agency process” that the platform is “no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary.
” The bill would also require ByteDance to give up control of TikTok’s well-known algorithm, which feeds users content based off their preferences. If the company chooses not to sell, TikTok would be prohibited from app stores — such as those offered by Apple and Google — as well as web-hosting services until a divesture occurs, according to the bill. Lawmakers from both parties — as well as law enforcement and intelligence officials — have long expressed concerns that Chinese authorities could force ByteDance to hand over data on the 170 million Americans who use TikTok