TECH - TikTok Ban: Is The US Government Taking A Page From China's Censorship Book? | Benzinga
The recent divest-or-be-banned legislation aimed at TikTok has sparked a wave of debate over how much the government should be allowed to control people’s access to content and media.
The legislation, signed into law by President Joe Biden last week, gives the Beijing-based social media platform nine months to a year to sell its U.S. operations or face an outright ban.
While the law presents TikTok's parent company ByteDance with two options, some commentators, including the company's CEO, have said the dilemma is actually a moot point and lawmakers supporting the law passed it knowing it would effectively signify a ban on the platform.
The bill achieved bipartisan support after a series of classified briefings convinced lawmakers that having 170 million TikTok users in the country presents a sufficiently important national security risk to push the bill forward.
On Monday, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said the European Union might soon follow suit.
The event is a first in U.S. internet history. Congress has passed several laws aimed at responsible internet usage among the population, like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which has the intent of stopping piracy and copyright violations.
Certain types of content like child pornography are deemed obscene and therefore are illegal and not protected by the First Amendment, yet the TikTok bill marks the first time the federal ...