Why congress’ attempt to ban TikTok matters
The Daily Article
The Denison Forum
4.9 • 576 Ratings
🗓️ 15 March 2024
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Earlier this week, the House of Representatives easily passed legislation that would essentially ban TikTok from the country unless its parent company sold its American user base. And while the bill faces a rockier path through the Senate, President Biden has already said he would sign it if it gets to his desk. But what’s actually in the bill and why are some wary that it won’t stop with TikTok?
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Today's Daily Article was written by Dr. Ryan Denison and narrated by Chris Elkins. You can read this article on our website. You may also receive it in your inbox by subscribing to our newsletter.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Greetings and welcome to the Daily Article Podcast. Today's Friday, March the 15th, 2024. |
| 0:07.7 | I'm Chris Elkins of the Denison Forum, narrating today's article by Dr. Ryan Denison. |
| 0:13.6 | While Congress has been trying to find a way to reign in TikTok for more than three years, |
| 0:18.6 | the bill passed by the House of Representatives earlier this |
| 0:21.7 | week seems to have the best chance yet of limiting China's potential influence through the |
| 0:26.7 | massively popular social media app. With a vote of 352 to 65, the legislation was sent up to the |
| 0:33.7 | Senate with overwhelming and bipartisan support. And while it's expected to face a more difficult time there, President Biden has already said that he would sign it if the bill makes it to his desk. |
| 0:45.3 | So what exactly would the bill do and why has opposition to the app grown so much in recent years? |
| 0:51.3 | Let's start with why members of Congress on both sides of the aisle |
| 0:55.4 | seem so worried about TikTok's pervasive use by Americans. The Chinese Communist Party requires |
| 1:01.9 | that all Chinese tech companies surrender any data that the government requests, regardless |
| 1:07.7 | of privacy laws in the countries where it was originally collected. |
| 1:11.8 | And while there is no clear evidence that the Chinese Communist Party has abused that ability in America to date, |
| 1:17.9 | a former employee of Bite Dance, TikTok's parent company, alleged that the government used the app to |
| 1:24.0 | identify and monitor activists in Hong Kong during pro-democracy protests of 2018. |
| 1:30.5 | Many in the American government fear the same capabilities could be used here as well. |
| 1:35.4 | TikTok currently has an estimated 170 million American users and, as Representative Mike Gallagher, |
| 1:43.3 | the chair of the House Select Committee on the |
| 1:45.7 | Chinese Communist Party and co-author of the bill remarked, America's foremost adversary has |
| 1:52.0 | no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States. Whether it was a |
| 1:57.3 | letter to America from Osama bin Laden that went viral on TikTok last year, |
| 2:02.4 | or the way the app has promoted videos favoring Hamas in the wake of the October 7th attacks last fall, |
... |
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