By: Ivan Wang

Lawmakers from both major political parties have recently passed a law that forces Bytedance to sell their app,TikTok, to a non-Chinese organization or else it would be banned in the U.S. However, current presidential candidate Donald Trump is against this decision. Lawmakers passed this law on December 14, 2022 and they have done so because they are afraid of the possibility that the Chinese government might force ByteDance to hand over all the data they’ve accumulated on U.S users of the app.

The reactions of users of TikTok are not happy to say the least,as for some it is vital to them and if it goes into effect they might lose their source of income. The CEO of ByteDance says,”Congress passed a bill that the president signed into law that is designed to ban TikTok in the United States. That will take TikTok away from you and 170 million Americans who find community and connection on our platform. Make no mistake,this is a ban…,and a ban on you and YOUR voice.”. From this we can see that the CEO of ByteDance is frustrated about this ban on TikTok as he says that it’s not only a ban on the app,but also on us and our voice.

In the following sentence we can see one of the user’s comment on this situation.”Bro, if they delete this app I don’t know how to survive solely because this is how I learn,”. This was said by a user of the app named Kourtlynn Faith and we can also see from this that she’s not very happy about this ban because it provides a lot of useful information.

There is still hope for ByteDance and the users of TikTok as Trump, if elected as president most likely will try to appeal the ban since he is against it and ByteDance is also soon going to take legal action against this new law.

SOURCES USED:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53476117
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/23/tech/congress-tiktok-ban-what-next/index.html
https://www.tiktok.com/@kourtlynn_/video/7345704170080439595?_r=1&_t=8nHrrw12ToQ
https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7361448925972155679?_r=1&_t=8nHrwpezikY