A provision in the foreign aid supplemental funding bill passed late last night by the United States Senate — and by the House of Representatives last Saturday — would force the Chinese-owned technology conglomerate ByteDance to either divest itself from TikTok or face its ban in the U.S. However, TikTok isn’t the only ByteDance-owned app that the bill will impact once it is signed into law by Joe Biden. The divestment language mirrors that of legislation passed by the House in mid-March.
An additional number of Chinese-owned companies could face having to find a buyer for their U.S. operations or being banned from American markets as well. ByteDance alone offers several other apps in U.S. digital app stores that fall under the same provisions impacting TikTok. The National Pulse has compiled a list of ByteDance-owned apps and other products that could be impacted below.
- CapCut – A video editing app often used by TikTok content makers.
- Hypic – A ByteDance-owned photo editing app.
- Gauth – An AI homework assistant.
- Lemon8 – A social media app with features similar to that of Pinterest.
- SoundOn – An app that pairs with TikTok and allows users to distribute original music creations.
- Lark – A software product similar to Microsoft‘s Office productivity suite or Google‘s Workplace.
- BytePlus – A cloud-based storage and computing service.
- 8th Note Press – A digital publishing platform.
In addition to ByteDance’s U.S. offerings, their foreign market products will likely face a ban on use in the United States. These include: