When will the Senate vote on the TikTok bill?

The popular social media application TikTok could soon be under new ownership or even banned from the United States if the current Chinese owners do not sell their stake in the company. This weekend saw the House pass legislation that could see the ultra-addictive video-scrolling app wiped from phones across the country if things do not change within a year.

Back in March, when the bill to ban the app or force a change of onwership was put forward, the Senate were cautious that such a motion would be quickly put down by a mixture of legal proceedings and public pressure.

However, the House moved again and attached an anti-TikTok bill to a U.S. foreign policy package that includes aid for Ukraine and Israel.

Penalties against both Russia and Iran, as well a ban on the app, was passed 360 to 58.

Why could TikTok be banned in the US?

It all comes down to the owner, ByteDance, a Chinese company who control the app. Recently, concerns among lawmakers and security experts have been raised, and they are worried that the Chinese government could potentially access TikTok’s huge database that stores information on millions of users in the US. This is precisely what makes the app so addictive: it moulds its content output to your specific likes and preferences.

“The idea that we would give the Communist Party this much of a propaganda tool, as well as the ability to scrape 170 million Americans’ personal data, it is a national security risk,” Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, told CBS earlier in the week.

Complaints regarding content intensified as the Israel-Hamas War has raged on: politically-charged messages has been sent across the application to millions.

What did TikTok say to its users about the bill?

The app itself has fought back, and last week some users were sent push notifications urging them to reach out to their lawmakers, warning that decisions from the Senate could “take away YOUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to access TikTok.”

TikTok also said in a statement that lawmakers in the US are “using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance to once again jam through a ban bill that would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans, devastate 7 million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes $24 billion to the U.S. economy, annually.”

CBS News congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane said that the next 24 hours are “pivotal” for the future of the app in the USA, with the President “already indicating he would sign it” if the app is not “sold or divested from its China-based owner”.

He said that “the senate will vote as early as tomorrow [Tuesday], potentially Wednesday”. Tick, tock, goes the clock, then...