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Tiktok Banned on Government Devices Under Spending Bill Passed By Congress

Tiktok Banned on Government Devices Under Spending Bill Passed By Congress

TikTok will no longer be allowed on government-owned smartphones under the bipartisan funding measure that was approved by both chambers of Congress on Friday, reflecting the growing worry about the well-known video-sharing app owned by China’s Byte Dance.
The plan, which still needs to be signed into law by President Joe Biden, also requires businesses considering significant mergers to pay more to file with federal antitrust regulators and requires e-commerce platforms to conduct more due diligence to help prevent the sale of counterfeit goods online.

Many of the most aggressive tech-related proposals that Congress tried to enact fell short, including antitrust legislation that would have required Apple and Google’s app stores to offer developers more payment options and a bill requiring extra safety measures for children online. Additionally, despite the fact that Congress made progress toward a compromise measure on national privacy rules this year compared to previous years, a patchwork of state laws still governs how consumer data is secured.
The absence of many antitrust laws that would have targeted its backers, who include Apple, Amazon, Google, and Meta, was applauded by the center-left IT industry lobby Chamber of Progress.

Following the publication of the package’s contents earlier this week, Chamber of Progress CEO Adam Kovacevich issued a statement saying, “What you don’t see in this year’s omnibus are the more contentious elements that have raised red flags on problems like content regulation.” The American Innovation and Choice Online Act, a well-known antitrust proposal, was formerly a source of concern for the group.
Net Choice, a different business organization, praised Congress for “refusing to include radical and unchecked leftist ideas to reform American antitrust law in this omnibus.”
But the legislation that the legislature passed as part of the spending package will still have an impact on technology in other ways.

TikTok Ban on Government Devices:

TikTok’s removal from government-owned devices may help competing apps like Snap’s Facebook and Instagram and Meta’s Facebook, which compete for the attention of young users. The measure makes an exception for uses related to national security, law enforcement, and research.

Since businesses domiciled in China may be forced by law to hand over user information, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have expressed concern that TikTok’s ownership structure could leave U.S. user data susceptible. Although TikTok has frequently insisted that the data it collects from American users is not stored in China, this guarantee hasn’t done much to allay worries.

Through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the business has been negotiating a deal with the administration to allay concerns about national security.

“We’re sorry that Congress has tried to prohibit TikTok on government devices – a political gesture that will do nothing to enhance national security interests,” a TikTok spokeswoman said in a statement after the text of the legislation was made public. “Any security issues that have been brought up at the federal and state levels will be adequately addressed by the agreement that is currently being reviewed by CFIUS. We will continue to advise Congress on these initiatives, which were developed to further safeguard our platform in the United States and are currently being implemented under the supervision of our nation’s top national security authorities.

Deterring Online Counterfeit Sales:

The INFORM Consumers Act, which aims to prevent the online sale of fake, stolen, or hazardous goods, is also part of the expenditure package. The bill mandates that online marketplaces like Amazon quickly gather and verify data from “any high-volume third-party seller,” including bank and contact information.
Amazon initially opposed the bill last year, writing that it was “pushed by some big-box retailers” and asserting that it would penalise small companies that sell online. However, the company ultimately supported a version of the bill, arguing that it was crucial to have a federal standard rather than a patchwork of state laws. eBay and Etsy had previously backed the legislation.

In a statement, Kovacevich stated that passing the bipartisan INFORM Act would be a big triumph for customers who “deserve to know whom they’re buying from when they visit an online marketplace.” Both parties, as well as traditional retailers and online marketplaces, have backed this legislation after years of hearings and markups.
The bill “will achieve our shared goal of protecting consumers from bad actors while avoiding overly broad disclosure requirements that would harm our sellers’ privacy and restrict their ability to run their creative businesses,” according to Jeffrey Zubricki, head of Etsy’s Americas advocacy and public policy.

Higher Fees for Big Mergers:

One provision to boost money for the antitrust authorities that examine mergers was included in the end-of-year legislation, despite more comprehensive antitrust measures targeting digital platforms not being included. The Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act will increase the fee that businesses seeking major mergers must pay in order to register with the antitrust authorities as required by law. Additionally, the bill decreases the price for smaller transactions and permits the fees to be changed annually in accordance with the consumer price index.

The Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Antitrust Division, who have experienced a significant increase in merger filings over the previous few years without commensurate budget increases, are the intended beneficiaries of the bill.
Even though it didn’t live up to antitrust supporters’ expectations, the merger filing fee bill’s inclusion was praised.
According to Sarah Miller, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project, which is supported in part by the Omidyar Network, “this is a significant turning point for the anti-monopoly campaign.” For the first time since 1976, antitrust law will be dramatically strengthened, according to Miller.

Miller continued, “Big Tech, Big Ag, and Big Pharma spent huge amounts in an unprecedented campaign to prevent Congress from passing antitrust reform and damage the authority of state and federal enforcers to uphold the law — and they lost.
The inclusion of merger fees “is an essential step to reform merger costs after decades of the status quo so we can provide our antitrust enforcers with the resources they need to perform their jobs,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., the bill’s sponsor, in a statement earlier this week. It is obvious that this is only the beginning of the battle. I’ll keep working across party lines to defend consumers and improve competition.

Empowering State Ags in Antitrust Cases:

A variation of the State Antitrust Enforcement Venue Act was one of the antitrust laws in the package. The law gives state attorneys general the ability to choose the district in which they file their charges and prevent them from being consolidated in another district, giving them the same authority as federal enforcers in antitrust prosecutions. According to the law, businesses defending themselves against accusations of antitrust infractions won’t be able to choose where they think the case would be heard more favorably.

This is what transpired in a case against Google for antitrust violations brought by a number of state attorneys general who claimed the corporation had an unjustified monopoly on the digital advertising market. In order to be heard alongside private antitrust accusations against the corporation in the pretrial processes, the company moved the case from Texas to New York.
Attorneys general from 52 states and territories wrote to Congress last year to support the proposal.

Openness Regarding Ransomware Attacks:

The bipartisan RANSOMWARE Act, which obliges the FTC to inform Congress about the quantity and variety of foreign ransomware or other malware complaints it receives, was also incorporated into the funding package. The FTC is also required to report to Congress any trends it notices in the amount of complaints it receives, including those from citizens, businesses, or governments of countries like China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia. Additionally, it must divulge details about the outcomes of any lawsuit it has taken in connection with these cases. The FTC can offer suggestions for new regulations to make it easier to withstand these attacks as well as for best practises that companies can use to safeguard themselves.

A study on how technology affects children:

The package also contains a version of the Children and Media Research Advancement (CAMRA) Act, which instructs the Department of Health and Human Services to perform or support studies on how media and technology affect young children, adolescents, and babies.
According to the law, these effects could include how technology like social networking, artificial intelligence, video games, or virtual reality affect people’s cognitive, mental, and physical health. Within two years of the law’s passage, the head of the National Institutes of Health is required to provide a report to Congress on its activities.

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