TikTok might be public enemy number one on Capitol Hill but other platforms are in the line of fire

TikTok might be public enemy number one on Capitol Hill but other platforms are in the line of fire،

The House of Representatives passed a bill earlier this week that could ban popular video site TikTok in the United States unless its parent company ByteDance divests its stake in TikTok. The problem is that ByteDance is a Chinese company considered close to the Chinese communist government. The problem is that ByteDance collects user data when Americans sign up for TikTok and that data ends up on a server on an office in Beijing.

By Gizmodo, the bill doesn't stop at TikTok and could ban other apps that the president considers a “threat to national security.” Eric Goldman, a professor of Internet law at Santa Clara University, told Gizmodo: “No one really knows who is covered by this bill. We're focusing on the TikTok article because that's obviously who would be targeted first. But this law has uncertain effects because we don't even know it. who we're talking about.”

The bill aims to eliminate the public enemy number for lawmakers.

ByteDance

The bill before the Senate could ban an app with certain characteristics, including a large number of subscribers, requiring subscribers to create an online profile to share content and being “controlled by a foreign adversary.” This control could simply mean that an application is “subject to the direction or control” of someone in Russia, China, North Korea or Iran. A broad reading of the bill could mean that “X” could be banned since he accepted money from the terrorist group Hamas for blue verification checkmarks when publishing false information.

Facebook could also be considered to be under the control of a foreign adversary such as Russia, as it has used surveys of Facebook groups set up by Russians to persuade American voters to vote a certain way. way in 2016. Again, this would require an extremely broad understanding of the bill.

Evan Brown, a Chicago-based technology lawyer, says: “There's a lot of room here for a creative interpretation of how someone could be in a foreign country and take control without owning it. The president really has the unchecked power to put another application on this subject. list.” The bill may ban apps with only one million monthly users.

Make no mistake, ByteDance/TikTok is public enemy number one and the main target of the bill. But most lawmakers don't like social media apps like Facebook and “X.” So if more platforms are destroyed, well, that's just collateral damage and nothing that those on Capitol Hill will lose sleep over.