Explainer: US lawmakers voted to curtail TikTok -- what's likely to happen next and what are the implications for users?

Source: TODAY

SINGAPORE -- Short-form video sharing platform TikTok may risk losing a large portion of its users after the United States' House of Representatives on Wednesday (March 13) passed a bill to compel the app's parent company, ByteDance, to divest the platform or be banned nationwide.

With an estimated 170 million US users on the social media platform that makes up the largest nationality slice of TikTok's one to 1.5 billion strong userbase, experts said a ban, if it happens, could impact the future of the platform, though not right off the bat.

The bill, which still has some hurdles to clear before it becomes law, gives ByteDance about six months to sell the app before it gets barred from US shores, but the Beijing-based and Singapore-headquartered technology company has said that Wednesday's developments are as good as banning the platform entirely.

"This process was secret and the bill was jammed through for one reason: it's a ban," said a TikTok spokesperson in response to TODAY's queries.

"We are hopeful that the Senate will consider the facts, listen to their constituents, and realize the impact on the economy, 7 million small businesses, and the 170 million Americans who use our service."

Beyond a tussle over one tech company on the pretext of national security, experts said the episode may further impact on the wider US-China relationship, which has been tense in recent years.

TODAY takes a look at what the passing of the bill will mean for the company and its users globally.

The overwhelming bipartisan support with a vote of 352-65 for the bill on Wednesday came years after the first attempt to curtail TikTok in the US in 2020, which also reflects how moves in recent years to curtail China's technological advantage over the US has support from both Democratic and Republican politicians.

The topic first arose in 2020, after former US President Donald Trump issued an executive order for a nationwide ban on TikTok and Chinese-owned WeChat, saying that these apps funnel user data to the Communist Party of China -- a claim consistently denied by ByteDance to date.

An executive order is a directive that comes from the US' executive branch, namely the US President, that does not require approval from the legislative branches of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

At the state level, Montana also issued a ban on TikTok in 2023 that applies to all residents within the state.

In both instances, the courts blocked attempts to overturn these moves on the basis that they violate the rights to free speech.

These moves led to the current bill being placed before a House committee last Thursday, with the stated aim of being targeted and specific to the national security threat TikTok poses to the US. Fifty committee members voted unanimously in support of it, paving the way for the vote in front of all members of the House on Wednesday.

With the bill now passed by the House, the next step is for the Senate to scrutinise and vote on it, before reaching the White House where it will face President Joe Biden's veto.

Mr Biden has already said that he will sign the bill if it passes the Senate.

But while some commentators believe the fate of the bill before the Senate is unclear, citing disagreement from some lawmakers, most noted the strong bipartisan support in the House as indicative of what the outcome will be.

Said telecom analyst Blair Levin in an investors report: "The bipartisan nature and size of the House vote make Senate passage more likely than not."

Should the bill become law after Mr Biden inks his approval, TikTok can still attempt to sue the US government, he said. After all, it was TikTok's legal action in 2020 that eventually led to the striking down of Mr Trump's earlier executive order.

Mr Levin noted how social media companies, by invoking the rights to free speech, have successfully sued and overturned state and federal attempts to restrict their operations.

Should the ban be enacted, the loss of US users may not be immediate, various media reports stated.

Current users are likely to be able to continue using the app, though a ban on app store support means users would not be able to access future updates or new features moving forward.

Should the American userbase eventually taper off, one aspect of the impact worth noting is advertisers, said Assistant Professor Ng Weiyi from National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School.

"If there are no US users, then you can't attract companies looking to advertise to this demographic," said Asst Prof Ng, who is from the department of strategy and policy at the business school.

"And for better or worse, the US is the largest economy in the world. So, it's a huge market share that is being blocked out."

The US is not the first country to restrict access to the app either partially or in full.

In June 2020, India banned TikTok along with dozens of other apps by Chinese developers, saying that they could compromise national security and integrity. At the time of the banning, TikTok had 150 million monthly active users there, according to data analytics firm Sensor Tower.

India's neighbour, Nepal, was banned the app in November 2023 for disturbing "social harmony and goodwill". It sparked protests in the Himalayan nation that had about 2.2 million TikTok users at the time, with influencers lamenting loss of income.

In Canada and for some countries in Europe, the social media app is also banned on government-owned devices.

In Singapore, public officers are allowed to use TikTok -- along with other social media apps -- on government-issued devices only on a "need-to basis".

Would a successful ban of TikTok by the US, on the pretext of security, nudge other countries to go down the same route as the US?

Not necessarily, according to Mr Muhammad Faizal Abdul Rahman from Singapore's S Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

"It depends on their bilateral relations with China, whether they share similar threat perceptions about TikTok, and whether similar curbs on TikTok could hurt their domestic interests," he told TODAY.

Analysts also noted that the attempt to curtail TikTok should be seen in the context of US-China relations in recent years.

With relations became icy during the trade war kickstarted by the Trump administration, international observers have noted some signs of thawing in recent months.

In November last year, Mr Biden met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in a summit to discuss potential cooperation and areas of differences between the two superpowers. This was followed up with a meeting between US national security advisor Jake Sullivan meeting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in January 2024.

The January meeting is part of an effort to "maintain open lines of communication and responsibly manage competition in the relationship" as directed by both countries' leaders, according to a White House readout.

But all this occurred before Wednesday's vote, which has since received condemnation from China.

Mr Faizal said that aside from security concerns, the efforts to ban TikTok in the US is partly driven by "the deep distrust and to some extent paranoia of American lawmakers towards China".

"The ban would also add to the list of US actions to decouple from China economically and technologically. It could be a strategic blow that aims to further contain China's global ambitions," said the research fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at RSIS.

Already, Mr Wang Yi had slammed US actions to suppress China recently at the Two Sessions annual meeting last week, he noted.

"A ban on TikTok would be another episode that hardens China's perceptions of the US, and the Chinese may respond to show strength and save face."

What does this mean for other countries? Mr Faizal said in the bigger scheme of things, despite attempts to improve dialogues between the two superpowers, there are still "good reasons" to be worried about China-US tensions "spiralling out of control", he added.

For ByteDance itself, it remains to be seen if losing its US users would affect TikTok in any way for other parts of the world.

Asst Prof Ng from NUS Business School said that there may be some "fallout" in the sense that when prominent US content creators are no longer on the platform, some loss in viewer counts can be expected.

This is because users on TikTok generally look for new experiences and mainly consume short videos fed by its algorithms, as opposed to on other social media platforms where the emphasis is more on consuming content of creators or pages that the users subscribe to.

"The adaptive algorithm and passive nature of TikTok content might buffer the platform from the fallout," he said.