The United States House of Representatives Wednesday morning overwhelmingly passed a bill. It would effectively either force the sale of TikTok or ban it in the U.S. Alabama’s delegation was almost unanimous on the issue, according to the reports of AL.com’s Howard Koplowitz.
As one would know by now, there’s an issue with the Chinese company ByteDance’s ownership of the social-media giant. It worries over whether Chinese Communist access to the personal data of more than 150 million Americans is a security threat.
It is to support for the bill has grown as the Biden Administration has warmed up to it. However, it’ll be a tougher road in the Senate than the 325-65 vote in the House. Six members of Alabama’s House delegation, five Republicans and one Democrat, voted in favor of the same. Only Rep. Barry Moore, the Republican who currently represents District 2 but just won the GOP nomination for re-mapped District 1, voted against.
He explained that he voted as he did because he believes a ban would violate the free-speech rights of all those Americans who are choosing to use the platform. Instead, he’d like to see a different approach.
“We need to protect Americans’ data from bulk exports by foreign adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party, but targeting a singular company is not the right way to do it,” He confirmed the same on an entirely different social-media platform, X. “Congress should restrict data transfers, not companies.”