The US House Of Representatives has voted in favour of a bill that could lead to a nationwide ban on TikTok.
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act passed by 352 to 290.
Any such government ban would force the removal of TikTok from Apple and Google app stores, unless Chinese parent company ByteDance sells its stake within six months.
The vote by the House Of Representatives follows previous attempts to curtail the app on the grounds of national security.
The legislation will now be scrutinised by the US Senate, although it is not clear yet how the upper chamber will vote on the issue. If the bill does pass the Senate, President Biden has indicated that he will sign it into law.
TikTok lobbied its own users ahead of the vote with the message: “The government will take away the community that you and millions of other Americans love."
In 2020, Donald Trump signed an executive order banning transactions with TikTok in the US, but it was ultimately unsuccessful.
The action by US legislators comes as Universal Music Group’s licensing dispute with TikTok has seen the major’s artists and songwriters removed from the platform’s general music library.
There are also indications that the National Music Publishers Association in the US does not plan to renew its licence with TikTok.
In a separate statement, the Association of Independent Music Publishers (AIMP) said: “Indie publishers should take this opportunity to fully evaluate what is being offered and make a decision for what is best for their business, not TikTok’s.”
Emmanuel de Buretel, president of French independent Because Music, also contributed to the debate about TikTok and licensing music with an op-ed in Le Monde.
"TikTok will not be able to do without music creations and creators, or those who make them exist," he wrote. "We have an overriding responsibility to our artists: to fight unwaveringly and fearlessly for the emergence of an agreement that will enable them to be properly protected and remunerated for their work, on a platform that respects human beings, in a secure and effectively moderated environment."
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