The U.S. government is inching closer and closer to a TikTok ban, a move that would impact more than just TikTok.
As Mashable reported over the weekend, the House passed an updated version of the ban with bipartisan support. If or when it makes its way to President Biden’s desk, Biden has signaled he will sign it into law, and effectively ban TikTok in the U.S. unless its China-based parent company, ByteDance, sells the platform.
However, it’s not just TikTok users who will be affected by such a ban. This bill paves the way for the U.S. to potentially ban many other foreign-based apps or platforms too. As Axios points out, the wording of the bill bans any app that the U.S. government deems to be a “foreign adversary controlled application” and includes apps “operated, directly or indirectly (including through a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate)” of those “foreign adversaries.”
Last month, Mashable shared some examples of apps that could potentially be affected by this bill if it became law such as WeChat or even shopping platforms like Temu or AliExpress. While the broad language of the bill does mean an array of companies and apps could find themselves affected, TikTok and its corporate parent ByteDance are the only parties specified.
And, as Axios reports, it seems pretty clear that if TikTok is banned in the U.S., ByteDance’s other catalog of app offerings are likely to go down too.
Goodbye to CapCut, Lemon8, Lark, and more?
While TikTok is the app that ByteDance is most known for, the company has been launching a multitude of other platforms and applications over the years that have become pretty popular within their target markets too.
For example, CapCut has become a very popular video editing app on both mobile devices and desktop computers. Many viral videos on TikTok and beyond are created using CapCut. Creators looking for a quick and easy video editing tool have utilized CapCut for longform videos too. However, CapCut is owned by ByteDance and could very well be banned if TikTok is. And the same goes for ByteDance’s photo editing app Hypic.
Lark is a productivity suite of apps for businesses that includes documents, chats, messaging, and more. It’s basically ByteDance’s version of Google Workspace and the company even uses it internally for its own business. However, under the U.S.’s TikTok ban bill, Lark could be banned too.
In addition to its extremely popular social video platform, ByteDance runs a Pinterest-like social media platform called Lemon8 which is fairly popular within the lifestyle and wellness community. Out of all of ByteDance’s apps, Lemon8 is likely the closest to TikTok, which could lead to it being barred in the U.S.
Other ByteDance apps available in the U.S. such as its “AI study companion” app Gauth and SoundOn, a music distribution and royalty platform for artists, could also be prohibited.
If the TikTok ban bill does become law, its unclear exactly what would happen next. ByteDance, under the law, would have to basically divest from TikTok and sell the company off within the year. But, TikTok is reportedly gearing up for a legal battle to fight the law if it does pass so it could be quite a while before ByteDance has to sell the app if it does eventually have to do so.