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WASHINGTON — The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee plans to take up legislation Tuesday that would give President Joe Biden the authority to ban TikTok, the Chinese social media app used by more than 100 million Americans.
The panel is scheduled to vote on a series of China-related bills Tuesday afternoon, including one that would revise the longstanding protections that have shielded distributors of foreign creative content like TikTok from U.S. sanctions for decades. Introduced last Friday, H.R. 1153 is expected to pass the committee on Tuesday.
The bill that could ultimately ensnare TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, only has one sponsor, the committee’s newly seated Republican chairman, Texas Rep. Mike McCaul.
Typically, a bill this new, with only one sponsor, would not move to committee votes just days after it was introduced. But the choice of which bills will advance through a committee is made by each committee’s chairman, so McCaul’s sponsorship is effectively all the bill needs.
If the measure is approved by a majority of the committee members and referred to the full House for a vote, as expected, H.R. 1153 will effectively leap frog several other proposals to ban TikTok that were previously introduced in the House and Senate, but haven’t yet advanced through the committee process.
After that, McCaul’s bill would likely pass the Republican-controlled House easily. But its fate in the Democratic majority Senate is unclear.
Despite the bitter divisions between the two parties on nearly every major issue, there is one thing both Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly support: proactive measures to stem China’s growing global influence. And H.R. 1153 could do that.
In practical terms, the bill would revise a group of rules known as the Berman amendments that were first enacted near the end of the Cold War, intended to shield “informational materials” like books and magazines from sanctions-related import and export bans.
Over time, however, the Berman amendments were expanded into a broad rule that courts interpreted as prohibiting the government from using sanctions powers to block trade in any informational materials, including digital content, to or from a foreign country.
In 2020, TikTok argued successfully in court that it was covered by the Berman amendments exemption when it beat back attempts by the Trump administration to ban its distribution by Apple and Google app stores.
McCaul told CNBC his bill would change this. “Currently the courts have questioned the administration’s authority to sanction TikTok. My bill empowers the administration to ban TikTok or any software applications that threaten U.S. national security,” McCaul said in a statement Monday.
Under McCaul’s bill, the Berman amendments exemptions that have protected TikTok in the past would no longer apply to companies that engage in the transfer of the “sensitive personal data” of Americans to entities or individuals based in, or controlled by, China.
On first reading, McCaul’s legislation appears to be broader than some of the other TikTok bills that have been introduced so far.
Critics and TikTok lobbyists have argued that those prior bills amounted to punishing the company for a crime outside the legal system. They also argue that any ban is tantamount to censorship of content protected by the First Amendment.
“It would be unfortunate if the House Foreign Affairs Committee were to censor millions of Americans,” TikTok spokeswoman Brooke Oberwetter told CNBC in an email Monday.
TikTok is no stranger to rough political waters, having been in the crosshairs of U.S. lawmakers since former President Donald Trump declared his intention to ban the app by executive action in 2020.
At the time, ByteDance was looking to potentially spin off TikTok to keep the app from being shut down.
In September 2020, Trump said he would approve an arrangement for TikTok to work with Oracle on a cloud deal and Walmart on a commercial partnership to keep it alive.
Those deals never materialized, however, and two months later Trump was defeated by Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
The Biden administration kept up the pressure. While Biden quickly revoked the executive orders banning TikTok, he replaced them with his own, setting out more of a road map for how the government should evaluate the risks of an app connected to foreign adversaries.
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TikTok has continued to engage with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which is under the Treasury Department. CFIUS, which evaluates risks associated with foreign investment deals, is scrutinizing ByteDance’s purchase of Musical.ly, which was announced in 2017.
The CFIUS review has reportedly stalled, but TikTok spokeswoman Oberwetter said the company still favors the deal.
“The swiftest and most thorough way to address national security concerns is for CFIUS to adopt the proposed agreement that we worked with them on for nearly two years,” she told CNBC on Monday.
In the meantime, government officials from the FBI and the Department of Justice have publicly warned about the dangers of using the app, and many states have imposed bans of their own.
On Monday, the Biden administration released new implementation rules for a TikTok ban that applies only to federal government-owned devices, which was passed by Congress in December.
Earlier this month, Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., chair of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on privacy, and Jerry Moran, R-Kan., a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a letter that CFIUS should “swiftly conclude its investigation and impose strict structural restrictions between TikTok’s American operations and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, including potentially separating the companies.”
But while the executive branch scrutinizes TikTok through CFIUS, McCaul and the GOP-controlled House are not waiting around for them to act.
“TikTok is a security threat. It allows the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] to manipulate and monitor its users while it gobbles up Americans’ data to be used for their malign activities,” McCaul told CNBC.
If TikTok-related legislation looks like it’s moving swiftly through Congress, that could spook investors, and work to the benefit of some of the company’s biggest competitors.
TikTok has been taking market share from Facebook, Instagram and Google‘s YouTube, which have all seen advertising slow dramatically over the past year.
According to Insider Intelligence, TikTok controls 2.3% of the worldwide digital ad market, putting it behind only Google (including YouTube), Facebook (including Instagram), Amazon and Alibaba.
— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this story from San Francisco.
A worker delivers Amazon packages in San Francisco on Oct. 24, 2024.
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Amazon on Thursday announced Prime members can access new fixed pricing for treatment of conditions like erectile dysfunction and men’s hair loss, its latest effort to compete with other direct-to-consumer marketplaces such as Hims & Hers Health and Ro.
Shares of Hims & Hers fell as much as 17% on Thursday, on pace for its worst day.
Amazon said in a blog post that Prime members can see the cost of a telehealth visit and their desired treatment before they decide to proceed with care for five common issues. Patients can access treatment for anti-aging skin care starting at $10 a month; motion sickness for $2 per use; erectile dysfunction at $19 a month; eyelash growth at $43 a month, and men’s hair loss for $16 a month by using Amazon’s savings benefit Prime Rx at checkout.
Amazon acquired primary care provider One Medical for roughly $3.9 billion in July 2022, and Thursday’s announcement builds on its existing pay-per-visit telehealth offering. Video visits through the service cost $49, and messaging visits cost $29 where available. Users can get treatment for more than 30 common conditions, including sinus infection and pink eye.
Medications filled through Amazon Pharmacy are eligible for discounted pricing and will be delivered to patients’ doors in standard Amazon packaging. Prime members will pay for the consultation and medication, but there are no additional fees, the blog post said.
Amazon has been trying to break into the lucrative health-care sector for years. The company launched its own online pharmacy in 2020 following its acquisition of PillPack in 2018. Amazon introduced, and later shuttered, a telehealth service called Amazon Care, as well as a line of health and wellness devices.
The company has also discontinued a secretive effort to develop an at-home fertility tracker, CNBC reported Wednesday.
Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning says censorship is still “a dominant threat,” advocating for a more decentralized internet to help better protect individuals online.
Her comments come amid ongoing tension linked to online safety rules, with some tech executives recently seeking to push back over content moderation concerns.
Speaking to CNBC’s Karen Tso at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon, Portugal, on Wednesday, Manning said that one way to ensure online privacy could be “decentralized identification,” which gives individuals the ability to control their own data.
“Censorship is a dominant threat. I think that it is a question of who’s doing the censoring, and what the purpose is — and also censorship in the 21st century is more about whether or not you’re boosted through like an algorithm, and how the fine-tuning of that seems to work,” Manning said.
“I think that social media and the monopolies of social media have sort of gotten us used to the fact that certain things that drive engagement will be attractive,” she added.
“One of the ways that we can sort of countervail that is to go back to the more decentralized and distribute the internet of the early ’90s, but make that available to more people.”
Nym Technologies Chief Security Officer Chelsea Manning at a press conference held with Nym Technologies CEO Harry Halpin in the Media Village to present NymVPN during the second day of Web Summit on November 13, 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal.
Asked how tech companies could make money in such a scenario, Manning said there would have to be “a better social contract” put in place to determine how information is shared and accessed.
“One of the things about distributed or decentralized identification is that through encryption you’re able to sort of check the box yourself, instead of having to depend on the company to provide you with a check box or an accept here, you’re making that decision from a technical perspective,” Manning said.
‘No longer secrecy versus transparency’
Manning, who works as a security consultant at Nym Technologies, a company that specializes in online privacy and security, was convicted of espionage and other charges at a court-martial in 2013 for leaking a trove of secret military files to online media publisher WikiLeaks.
She was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but was later released in 2017, when former U.S. President Barack Obama commuted her sentence.
Asked to what extent the environment has changed for whistleblowers today, Manning said, “We’re at an interesting time because information is everywhere. We have more information than ever.”
She added, “Countries and governments no longer seem to invest the same amount of time and effort in hiding information and keeping secrets. What countries seem to be doing now is they seem to be spending more time and energy spreading misinformation and disinformation.”
Manning said the challenge for whistleblowers now is to sort through the information to understand what is verifiable and authentic.
“It’s no longer secrecy versus transparency,” she added.
LISBON, Portugal — British online lender Zopa is on track to double profits and increase annual revenue by more than a third this year amid bumper demand for its banking services, the company’s CEO told CNBC.
Zopa posted revenues of £222 million ($281.7 million) in 2023 and is expecting to cross the £300 million revenue milestone this year — that would mark a 35% annual jump.
The 2024 estimates are based on unaudited internal figures.
The firm also says it is on track to increase pre-tax profits twofold in 2024, after hitting £15.8 million last year.
Zopa, a regulated bank that is backed by Japanese giant SoftBank, has plans to venture into the world of current accounts next year as it looks to focus more on new products.
The company currently offers credit cards, personal loans and savings accounts that it offers through a mobile app — similar to other digital banks such as Monzo and Revolut which don’t operate physical branches.
“The business is doing really well. In 2024, we’ve hit or exceeded the plans across all metrics,” CEO Jaidev Janardana told CNBC in an interview Wednesday.
He said the strong performance is coming off the back of gradually improving sentiment in the U.K. economy, where Zopa operates exclusively.
Commenting on Britain’s macroeconomic conditions, Janardana said, “While it has been a rough few years, in terms of consumers, they have continued to feel the pain slightly less this year than last year.”
The market is “still tight,” he noted, adding that fintech offerings such as Zopa’s — which typically provide higher savings rates than high-street banks — become “more important” during such times.
“The proposition has become more relevant, and while it’s tight for customers, we have had to be much more constrained in terms of who we can lend to,” he said, adding that Zopa has still been able to grow despite that.
A big priority for the business going forward is product, Janardana said. The firm is developing a current account product which would allow users to spend and manage their money more easily, in a similar fashion to mainstream banking providers like HSBC and Barclays, as well as fintech upstarts such as Monzo.
“We believe that there is more that the consumer can have in the current account space,” Janardana said. “We expect that we will launch our current account with the general public sometime next year.”
Janardana said consumers can expect a “slick” experience from Zopa’s current account offering, including the ability to view and manage multiple account bank accounts from one interface and access to competitive savings rates.
IPO ‘not top of mind’
Zopa is one of many fintech companies that has been viewed as a potential IPO candidate. Around two years ago, the firm said that it was planning to go public, but later decided to put those plans on ice, as high interest rates battered technology stocks and the IPO market froze over in 2022.
Janardana said he doesn’t envision a public listing as an immediate priority, but noted he sees signs pointing toward a more favorable U.S. IPO market next year.
That should mean that Europe becomes more open to IPOs happening later in 2026, according to Janardana. He didn’t disclose where Zopa would end up going public.
“To be honest, it’s not the top of mind for me,” Janardana told CNBC. “I think we continue to be lucky to have supportive and long-term shareholders who support future growth as well.”
Last year, Zopa made two senior hires, appointing Peter Donlon, ex-chief technology officer at online card retailer Moonpig, as its own CTO. The firm also hired Kate Erb, a chartered accountant from KPMG, as its chief operating officer.
The company raised $300 million in a funding round led by Japanese tech investor SoftBank in 2021 and was last valued by investors at $1 billion.