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The U.S. House of Representatives voted 352-65 on March 13, 2024, to require TikTok\u2019s parent company, China-based ByteDance, to\u00a0sell the app or face a nationwide ban on TikTok<\/a>. President Joe Biden said on March 8 that\u00a0he would sign the legislation<\/a>\u00a0if it reached his desk.<\/p>\n The popular video social media app had\u00a0149 million users in the U.S.<\/a>\u00a0as of January 2024. Many of them contacted Congress to\u00a0protest the possibility of a ban<\/a>.<\/p>\n The bill\u2019s fate in the Senate is unclear. It\u2019s also unclear whether any resulting legislation would survive a court challenge.<\/p>\n On May 17, 2023, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte signed\u00a0legislation banning TikTok<\/a>\u00a0in the state, the first total ban by a U.S. state government. The law would\u00a0impose fines of US$10,000 per day<\/a>\u00a0on any app store that offers TikTok and on the app-maker itself if it operates in the state. Individual users would not be subject to penalties. The law was scheduled to go into effect Jan. 1, 2024, but a\u00a0federal judge blocked it<\/a>\u00a0pending a trial to determine whether the state overstepped its authority and whether the law violates the First Amendment.<\/p>\n The federal government, along with many state and foreign governments and some companies, has already\u00a0banned TikTok on work-provided phones<\/a>. This type of ban can be effective for protecting data related to government work.<\/p>\n But a full national ban of the app is another matter, which raises a number of questions: What data privacy risk does TikTok pose? What could the Chinese government do with data collected by the app? Is its content recommendation algorithm dangerous? Is it legal for a government to impose a total ban on the app? And is it even possible to ban an app?<\/p>\n