Measures forcing TikTok’s China-based parent company to sell the social media platform under the threat of a ban were signed into law today by President Joe Biden, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. The TikTok legislation, included as part of a larger $95 billion package that provides foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel, was passed 79–18 in the Senate on Tuesday, the Associated Press reports.
A decision made by House Republicans last week to attach the TikTok bill to the high-priority package helped expedite its passage in Congress and came after negotiations with the Senate, where an earlier version of the bill had stalled. That version had given TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, six months to divest its stakes in the platform, but it drew skepticism from some key lawmakers concerned it was too short of a window for a complex deal that could be worth tens of billions of dollars.
The revised legislation extends the deadline, giving ByteDance nine months to sell TikTok and a possible three-month extension if a sale is in progress. The bill would also bar the company from controlling TikTok’s secret sauce: the algorithm that feeds users videos based on their interests and has made the platform a trendsetting phenomenon.
