The US Senate approved a bill to sell or block TikTok in the country

Once passed by the Senate, the legislation must be signed by President Joe Biden. The company will then have about a year to close the deal.

In early March, Chinese authorities notified ByteDance that they would not allow the forced sale of TikTok in the United States. The head of the White House, in turn, promised to support the bill if it is approved in Congress.

Initially, parliamentarians approved a document that provided for the sale of assets within six months, but the deadlines were later extended.

For the first time, Chinese ByteDance ran into trouble in the United States in 2019. The Federal Trade Commission then fined TikTok $5.7 million because the service collected data on children without parental permission.

And the first to threaten to ban the social network in the country in 2020 was the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump, who put a condition on the sale of the company to Microsoft or another American organization. However, the deal never came together.

Today, US intelligence representatives have questions about TikTok. The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner, pointed out that the social network should operate in the country only under the control of a local company or organization from the United Kingdom, France, Canada or Brazil.

As Senate Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell noted before the vote, Congress is fighting to prevent foreigners from conducting espionage, surveillance and smear operations that harm ordinary citizens and the military.