Tech mogul Elon Musk opposed the plan to ban TikTok in the United States, as another bill is bound to be voted in Congress on Saturday.
“In my opinion, TikTok should not be banned in the USA, even though such a ban may benefit the 𝕏 platform,” remarked Musk, who has long advocated for free speech.
“Doing so would be contrary to freedom of speech and expression. It is not what America stands for.”
House Republicans, through House Speaker Mike Johnson, have unveiled a national security bill with provisions for banning TikTok in America if ByteDance, the owner of the platform, does not divest its links with the Chinese Communist Party.
As per the bill, ByteDance has a year to sever its connections with the CCP.
The legislation also allows the president of the United States to designate other programs or applications as national security threats if they are controlled by a hostile country.
Meanwhile, X users have also weighed in on the proposed TikTok bill.
Tom Fitton of the Heritage Foundation replied to Musk’s tweet, “Another way to think about this issue is to recognize that TikTok users and US platforms that distribute the app are effectively doing business with a Chinese government-controlled entity. I’ve seen no persuasive evidence that the company is independent from Chinese communist government control.”
Another X user wrote, “Personally, I oppose the TikTik ban because it does not address the larger data privacy issue, with META and others doing the same thing, and it grants draconian powers to the President to put social media platforms out of business at will.”
“The law they use to ban TikTok could later be used to ban Telegram. And then from there, they’ll move on to US platforms,” Ian Miles Cheong replied to Musk.
Even former President Donald Trump expressed opposition to the ban during an interview with CNBC last month.
Trump said, “I sort of said, you guys decide you make that decision because it’s a tough decision to make. Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok that love it. There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it. There are a lot of users. There’s, you know, a lot of good, and there’s a lot of bad with TikTok. But the thing I don’t like is that without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger. And I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people, along with a lot of the media. What Facebook did with lock boxes, with a $500 million Zuckerberg’s lock boxes that he put in. I mean, I considered it illegal.”
