In response to the Saturday voting, a TikTok spokesman said that if the Senate votes for the ban, it “would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans.“
US lawmakers recently approved a divest-or-ban bill that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok to non-Chinese owners in six months, with the option to extend the timeframe with another three months if sale negotiations are ongoing.
Over the weekend, the US House of Representatives went even further and voted to ban the social app if ByteDance, its parent company, doesn’t cut ties with China.
