The vote in Congress on blocking TikTok/Reuters
What exactly does the American bill include?
The bill that was approved by the House of Representatives and still needs to be approved by the US Senate would require ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, to sell its ownership of TikTok to new non-Chinese owners within 6 months of the law's approval.
If this is not done then Tiktok's activity in the US will be blocked.
What might be the meaning of the structural separation that the American legislator wants to make for the users and the users of the network for marketing purposes?
The main claims of the American government against TikTok are that the Chinese government uses TikTok to collect information about American users and that the Chinese government uses the popular application to transmit messages that reflect the policies of the Chinese government and thus influence American public opinion.
In this regard, it is interesting to note the connection to Israel.
Several members of Congress who supported the bill gave as an example the false information published on the TikTok network against Israel during the Iron Swords War, which served the Chinese government's policy against the American government's support for Israel.
The idea behind the bill is that selling TikTok to non-Chinese owners would mean that the Chinese government would lose the ability to pressure TikTok to obtain information about American users of the app and influence information posted on TikTok.
Why does the legislator want to act in a way of separating the Chinese and American legal entities from each other, instead of 'grabbing the bull by the horns' and simply blocking the social network?
Miki Shapira/Yoram Reshef
From a legal point of view, the main argument of the Chinese owner of Tiktok is that the bill violates the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibits the enactment of laws that violate freedom of speech, and therefore, apparently, a wholesale blocking of the social network will not be approved by the US Supreme Court.
Therefore, the American legislator chose to follow the path of separating the legal entities and only if the owner of TikTok violates the provisions of the law then the network will be blocked in the USA.
It is worth noting that the way chosen by the American legislator will also be subject to US court approval, if the new law does not violate the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
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Will Tiktok be able to carry out the structural separation required by the law for appearance only and continue to conduct itself in practice exactly the same?
The Chinese owner of Tiktok could try to outwit the provisions of the law by selling Tiktok to owners who will cooperate with the Chinese owners behind the scenes and thus try to evade the provisions of the law.
However, I predict that as the law passes then the US government will carefully check the identity of the purchaser of TikTok to prevent any connection between the future purchaser and the Chinese owners.
What is the possibility that Israel will adopt a similar arrangement?
Until today, Israeli policy has been to sit on the fence and not participate in conflicts between the US and China with the aim of maintaining significant trade relations with both of them - two of the three main countries to which Israel exports goods, according to data from the Ministry of Economy and Industry from 2022.
Therefore, in a normal situation , it is unlikely that the Israeli government will take such a dramatic step. However, in the current situation, when the Chinese government takes a clear anti-Israeli position, which is manifested in the large number of users on this network who support Palestinian positions in the war compared to high blocking percentages of users who upload pro-Israeli content, it is possible that applying a similar change in Israel and standing by the US in its confrontations with China as reflected in the anti-TikTok law is not such a bad idea.
Attorney Miki Shapira is a partner at Arnon, Tadmor-Levi, an expert in mergers and acquisitions.
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