Commonly referred to as a federal law banning TikTok from the United States, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act ordered ByteDance to divest from TikTok and its other applications. It was signed by President Biden seven weeks later and survived a further Supreme Court challenge.<\/p>
TikTok and its parent company were long a target of congressional efforts to ban them on account of political and national security concerns related to its Chinese ownership. Last March, a bipartisan majority of 352 to 65 passed the law. It required ByteDance and its subsidiaries to sell TikTok and its other apps to an entity that isn’t based in China by the Jan. 18 deadline, or it would prohibit any US company from “distributing, maintaining or updating” the applications. In effect, this meant a removal from app stores. <\/p>