bloomberggovernment

Gonna try to answer this one and a few below - There’s been some reporting out there that the bill as currently written is too broad and could lead to wider restrictions than just the app.

Sen. Rand Paul did oppose the bill because he felt it was overly broad and former GOP Rep. Justin Amash is also warning the bill could be abused by the US government. There's a real chance we could hear these concerns grow louder as more lawmakers look into the bill.

That said, I haven't heard too many VPN specific concerns have yet to hit Capitol Hill - yet.

Remember, RESTRICT has only been introduced. It still needs to be

-Marked up in a Senate committee

-Passed on the Senate floor

-Marked up in a House committee

-Passed on the House floor

(And likely has a lot of other steps in between.)
-Emily

(edited to clarify that Emily answered this one and not Skye - although he's welcome to add to this as well!)

This right here is the crux of the argument Reps. Jamaal Bowman, AOC and other progressive lawamkers are making: why are we focusing on TikTok when so many issues exist on all social media platforms?

If you talk to those who support a TikTok ban, they'll tell you things like user privacy, user data, the algorithms and guardrails for children are all important. And a lot of bills have been introduced addressing these concerns.

However, most of those bills stalled last Congress over internal disagreements in both parties.

If you want to understand why bills to ban TikTok have more momentum, just look at the strong bipartisan votes behind things like creating the "Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party."

No lawmaker wants to be seen as "weak" on China's government right now, and TikTok has become a part of that push.-Emily

Great question! US officials do seem genuinely concerned about whether the Chinese government can access the data of US TikTok users, primarily because of China’s National Intelligence Law, which requires organizations and citizens to "support, assist in and cooperate in national intelligence work in accordance with the law" (English translation of the law here).

Concerns about data access seem most acute in the military arena (Navy and Army banned TikTok back in 2019) and in relation to finances (for example, West Virginia has limited a TikTok ban to only the state's auditor office, which handles financial and payroll info).

While US officials raising these concerns haven't provided evidence that this kind of state-backed data intrusion has occurred yet, several employees at TikTok's parent company were fired after accessing the data of two US journalists last year.

However, TikTok is adamant that it won't and has not shared US user data with the Chinese government. They also haven't provided any supporting evidence on that front. - Skye

The major difference between TikTok and other apps is that TikTok is owned by a Chinese company (ByteDance) and the other apps are not.

Most lawmakers acknowledge that all social media platforms have issues with gathering information, user privacy, algorithms, and how to keep younger users safe.

However, legislation addressing wider changes to all that has been stalled in Congress.

There's more momentum around TikTok right now because there's more momentum in Congress around boosting national security as it relates to China's government. -Emily

So I can answer part of this question.

In 2022, Meta spent $19.15M on lobbying the federal government.That same year, ByteDance spent $5.38M.(Twitter spent $1.32M, Snap Inc -Snapchat- spent $680K.)

Source is OpenSecrets

So we know Meta spent much more on lobbying last year compared to ByteDance.

What's harder to say is what exactly Meta was lobbying on. We could do a search for bills (here's a website that will allow you to do that for the House) but we can't really say how they were lobbying on the bill and what they were asking for.

I do think it's safe to say that because FB and Insta have similar features to TikTok, Meta could benefit if TikTok was banned in the US.
-Emily