• by Wendy Davis , Yesterday

A lawmaker is floating a bill to allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States, provided the company stores data on U.S. users in this country, and allows researchers and the public to access certain metrics about publicly posted content.

A draft version of the TikTok Transparency and Data Security Act, unveiled Thursday by Senator Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts), would create an exemption to the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. That law, passed last year, was suppose to have prohibited app stores and websites from distributing TikTok unless it separated from China-based parent company ByteDance.

The statute gave the company a January 19 deadline for divestiture, but President Donald Trump has extended that deadline on three occasions. The current deadline is September 17.

Markey's proposed legislation would permanently exempt TikTok from the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, but only if the company takes steps to protect U.S. users' data from China, and offers transparency into its metrics.

"These conditions are intended to address the biggest concerns with ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok -- the potential for ByteDance to manipulate TikTok’s algorithm to support Chinese interests and to use TikTok’s user data in a manner harmful to the United States," Markey's office said in a one-page summary of the bill.

Specifically, the bill would require TikTok to store U.S. users' personal information on servers in this country, and prohibit the company from transferring the information to any foreign adversary -- unless the data is public, or needed for specific reasons such as combatting spam or responding to an emergency.

The measure also would require TikTok to allow "qualified" researchers to access information about public content, such as the number of views, unique viewers and comments.

The company would be required to allow the public at large to access similar data about "public viral content" or "content from major public accounts."

The proposed legislation would also allow people to scrape TikTok in order to conduct "privacy protective" research, and would require the company to issue reports about content moderation and requests by governments to take down content.

Last year, Markey argued against a ban on the app, saying the move “could and likely will result in widespread censorship.” (He ultimately voted in favor of the package of bills that included the ban.)

TikTok unsuccessfully challenged the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act in court, arguing that the law violated the First Amendment. The Supreme Court unanimously sided against TikTok, ruling that the law was justified by national security concerns stemming from TikTok's ability to collect data about American users.