Lawmakers remind Apple of its role in enforcing TikTok ban starting next month

Lawmakers remind Apple it must remove TikTok from the App Store next month

As TikTok’s ban in the United States swiftly approaches, lawmakers on Friday reminded Apple that they are on the hook for enforcement.

TikTok ban: The latest news As a refresher, President Biden signed the TikTok divest-or-ban bill in April. The bill didn’t explicitly ban TikTok but gave China-linked parent company ByteDance nice months to sell TikTok. That timeline expires next month, at which point TikTok will be banned in the United States starting January 19. The law was upheld in court last week.

The law results from concerns about TikTok and ByteDance potentially being a national security threat in the United States.

Starting January 19, app store operators like Apple and Google will be barred from hosting TikTok in the United States. In a new letter this week, House China Select Committee chair John Moolenaar (R-MI) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook reminding him of Apple’s responsibility:

As you know, without a qualified divestiture, the Act makes it unlawful to “[p]rovid[e]services to distribute, maintain, or update such foreign adversary controlled application (including any source code of such application) by means of a marketplace (including an online mobile application store) through which users within the land or maritime borders of the United States may access, maintain, or update such application.

Under U.S. law, Apple must take the necessary steps to ensure it can fully comply with this requirement by January 19, 2025.

Lawmakers sent a similar letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, as well as a new letter to TikTok CEO Shou Chew. In the letter to Chew, the lawmakers said:

“The Court held that ‘[t]he First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.[,]’ and rejected all of TikTok’s constitutional claims… Congress has acted decisively to defend the national security of the United States and protect TikTok’s American users from the Chinese Communist Party. We urge TikTok to immediately execute a qualified divestiture.”

While ByteDance still has just over a month to scramble and avoid a TikTok ban in the United States, time is certainly running out.