The President of the United States, Joe Biden has finally signed into law a bill seeking to ban social media app, TikTok in a move that is now generating widespread reactions across the world.
The U.S. Congress previously enacted a law requiring TikTok’s parent firm, ByteDance, located in China, to sell the app within nine months or risk having it banned from the country.
Biden signed the bill attached to the $95 billion foreign aid package Congress approved this week that will deliver more funding to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, TikTok has vowed to take legal action against the new law.
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TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek called the law “unconstitutional” in a statement and vowed to “challenge it in court.”
TikTok won a legal battle against former President Donald Trump’s attempt in 2020 to force the sale of TikTok via an executive order that would prohibit any U.S.-based transactions with ByteDance if the company did not divest the app within 45 days.
In a related development, the European Union (EU) has threatened to ban a new service launched by TikTok in the continent over a series of policies that it wasn’t comfortable with.
The Union pointed out that it believes that the new service could be “as addictive as cigarettes.”
It called on the TikTok company to offer “compelling” fresh evidence that children would be safeguarded.
Africa Today News, New York reports that this would be the first time the EU has used sweeping new powers to impose sanctions on social media companies.
The EU Digital Service Act (DSA) came into force in August 2023.
The EU commission, according to the Guardian, gave TikTok until Wednesday to “bring arguments in its defence which the commission will carefully assess.”