The bicameral legislature of the United States of America, known as Congress, has passed a substantial spending bill that includes a bill that prohibits the use of TikTok on government devices.
To raise funds for antitrust agencies, the bill also includes new merger filing fees and a bill requiring online platforms to screen sellers to prevent counterfeits. Many of the most aggressive bills that targeted technology, including antitrust legislation that the industry opposed, were not passed by Congress.
Under the bipartisan spending charge that passed the two offices of Congress on Friday, TikTok will be restricted from government gadgets, highlighting the developing worry about the famous video-sharing application owned by China’s ByteDance.
The bill, which actually must be endorsed into regulation by President Joe Biden, additionally approaches internet business platforms to accomplish other things reviewing to assist with deflecting fake merchandise from being sold on the web, and powers organizations chasing after huge consolidations to pay more to record with government antitrust offices.
Meanwhile, many of the most aggressive bills aimed at technology were defeated in Congress. These include antitrust legislation that would have required Apple and Google app stores to provide developers with more payment options and a measure that would have required new safeguards to protect children online.
Industry group, NetChoice, also acclaimed Congress for “declining to incorporate revolutionary and uncontrolled moderate recommendations to update American antitrust regulation in this omnibus.”
However, the spending package’s bills will still have an impact on the tech sector in other ways.
Competitors Snap and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, which also compete for the attention of young consumers, may benefit from the ban on TikTok on government devices. A provision for research, national security, and law enforcement is made in the bill.
Since companies based in China may be required by law to hand over user information, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle and FBI Director Christopher Wray have expressed concern that TikTok’s ownership structure could make user data in the United States vulnerable. Despite TikTok’s repeated assurances that its U.S. user data is not stored in China, these assurances have not alleviated concerns.
On the other hand, TikTok has been pursuing an arrangement with the organization to mitigate public safety fears through the Board on foreign investment in the U.S.
“We’re disappointed that Congress has moved to ban TikTok on government devices — a political gesture that will do nothing to advance national security interests — rather than encouraging the Administration to conclude its national security review,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement following the release of the package text.
“The agreement under review by CFIUS will meaningfully address any security concerns that have been raised at both the federal and state level. These plans have been developed under the oversight of our country’s top national security agencies — plans that we are well underway in implementing — to further secure our platform in the United States, and we will continue to brief lawmakers on them.”
The INFORM Consumers Act is another component of the spending package that aims to prevent online sales of harmful, stolen, or counterfeit goods. According to the bill, “any high-volume third party seller” must promptly collect and verify bank and contact information from online marketplaces like Amazon.
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In 2021, Amazon wrote that the bill was “pushed by some big-box retailers” and that it would penalize small businesses that sell online. However, the company ended up supporting a version of the bill, stating that it was important to have a federal standard rather than a patchwork of state laws. In the beginning, Amazon opposed the bill.
“Passing the bipartisan INFORM Act would be a major victory for consumers, who deserve to know who they’re buying from when they visit an online marketplace,” Kovacevich said in a statement. “This legislation has been through years of hearings and markups and has earned the support of both parties as well as brick-and-mortar stores and online marketplaces.”
According to Sarah Miller, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project,
“This is a major milestone for the anti-monopoly movement, which is backed in part by the Omidyar Network. Miller said the bill will “significantly strengthen antitrust law for the first time since 1976.”
“Big Tech, Big Ag and Big Pharma spent extraordinary sums in an unprecedented effort to keep Congress from delivering on antitrust reform and undermine the ability of state and federal enforcers to uphold the law — and they lost,” Miller added.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who sponsored the bill, said in a statement earlier this week its inclusion “is an important step to restructure merger fees after decades of the status quo so we can provide our antitrust enforcers with the resources they need to do their jobs.”
“This is clearly the beginning of this fight and not the end,” she said. “I will continue to work across the aisle to protect consumers and strengthen competition.”
The bill gives state attorneys general the same power as federal enforcers in antitrust cases to choose the district in which they bring their cases and prevent them from being consolidated in a different district.
