President Joe Biden signed a bill Wednesday containing provisions that could ban TikTok in the United States, throwing cold water on the platform’s multi-million dollar lobbying effort that utilized former lawmakers in an attempt to influence policy on Capitol Hill.
TikTok and its China-based parent company ByteDance spent $3.1 million lobbying as Congress considered legislation that would force ByteDance to either sell the social media platform or face a ban in the U.S. between January and March, new disclosures show. As part of its multi-million dollar lobbying strategy, TikTok hired two former senators and three former representatives to lobby on its behalf.
The social media platform has repeatedly denied that it has ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), yet current and previous Bytedance employees have alleged that TikTok continues to share U.S. users’ data with ByteDance, The Wall Street Journal reported. TikTok frequently pushes content for users that mirrors the CCP’s wider geopolitical agenda, according to a recent study by Network Contagion Research Institute and Rutgers University.
Former Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and former Democratic Louisiana…
