WASHINGTON—A bipartisan group of lawmakers today introduced a bill in the House that would require ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to divest in the app or face a federal ban.

The following can be attributed to Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. 

This bill raises serious First Amendment concerns. Congress can protect data privacy and security without banning Americans from accessing one of the world’s most popular communications platforms. It should start by passing a comprehensive privacy law restricting the kinds of information that TikTok and other platforms can collect. Banning Americans from accessing foreign media should be a last resort. Where there are alternatives, as there are here, Congress needs to use tools that impose less of a burden on First Amendment rights.

Last year, the Knight Institute, representing a coalition of social media researchers, challenged Texas’s TikTok ban as applied to faculty in the state’s public universities. Read more about that case here. 

Read Jaffer’s New York Times guest essay, “There’s a Problem With Banning TikTok. It’s Called the First Amendment.” (March 24, 2023) here.

Read today’s bill, known as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, here. 

For more information, contact: Lorraine Kenny, [email protected].