How a US TikTok ban could clobber the pro-Palestine movement – and hurt Joe Biden’s election chances

Before last October, Awa's TikTok account was devoted to pleasant things: fashion, for instance, and her favourite places to visit in New York City where she lives.

Then the current Israel-Hamas war began, and Awa's profile became one of a new wave of pro-Palestinian activism galvanised by the wildly popular short-form video app.

«It has woken up the entire nation,» the 26-year-old, known on TikTok as Sincerely Awa, told The Independent.

«We have had Palestinian activists in this country doing their best to bring up the truth, and they have always, for the past 75 years, been suppressed by the mainstream media...

»TikTok has made us be able to reach so many people across the nation, to understand what is truly happening to these people – that they are in an occupation, that they are in a genocide."

Now TikTok itself is under threat after the US House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday evening that would ban the app in the United States if its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, doesn't sell it off within six months.

Supporters argue that TikTok's ownership gives the Chinese government a back door into the personal data of its 170 million monthly US users, or even allows the Chinese Communist Party to covertly shape public opinion.

TikTok denies both of those claims, saying the bill would «trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs».

The bill, which was introduced in March, still needs to get through the US Senate and could yet be subject to a legal challenge, like the one that kiboshed Donald Trump's attempt in 2020 to force a similar sale through executive fiat.

But if a ban actually happens, TikTokkers