The legislation gives TikTok nine months to divest from its Chinese parent company ByteDance or face exclusion from the U.S. market.
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Officials in the United States and other Western countries say the social media platform allows Beijing to collect data and spy on users. In the United States alone, it has 170 million users, many of them teenage.
Critics say TikTok is also a channel for spreading propaganda. China and the company strongly deny these claims.
“Don’t be fooled, this is a ban. Ban TikTok and ban you and your voice,” said TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew in a video posted on TikTok moments after President Joe Biden signed the bill.
“Politicians may say otherwise, but don’t be fooled. Many sponsors of the bill admit that the ultimate goal is to ban Tiktok.”
Chew called the move “ironic” given that “freedom of speech on TikTok reflects the same American values that make the United States a beacon of freedom.” “Rest assured, we are not going anywhere,” Chew told users of the platform.
“We will continue to fight for your rights in the courts. The facts and the Constitution are on our side.”
The ban was included in a $95 billion foreign aid package that includes military aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
The bill, which could result in the sporadic step of banning the company from operating in the U.S. market, passed the Senate on a 79-18 vote three days after being approved by the House of Representatives with sturdy bipartisan support.
Before the vote, FBI Director Christopher Wray said ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, is “grateful to the Chinese government,” which “is trying every day to steal our artificial intelligence and hack American technology.”
Americans need to think of TikTok’s “power, access, opportunity and control” as something in the hands of the Chinese government and intelligence services, Wray said.
Under the bill, ByteDance would have to sell the app or be banned from the Apple and Google app stores in the United States.
According to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, the likely buyers of TikTok would be Microsoft or Oracle.
TikTok has been in the crosshairs of US authorities for years, who claim that the platform allows Beijing to spy on users in the United States.
The bill passed by Congress also gives the US president the power to declare other apps a threat to national security if they are controlled by a country deemed hostile.
Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, formerly Twitter, spoke out against the TikTok ban last week, saying it “would be contrary to freedom of speech and expression.”
