TikTok is facing legal challenges as lawmakers passed legislation that will force the video-sharing platform's parent company ByteDance to divest ownership within 165 days. Citing user data concerns, the unanimous vote mandates that TikTok's US operations be separate from the China-based company.

If ByteDance fails to comply, major tech companies like Google (GOOG, GOOGL) and Apple (AAPL) will be prohibited from featuring TikTok on their respective app stores and platforms.

Yahoo Finance's Dan Howley breaks down the details.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Angel Smith

Video Transcript

RACHELLE AKUFFO: Well, TikTok fighting back against Washington's latest missive, a bipartisan panel of lawmakers voting unanimously Thursday to pass legislation forcing ByteDance to divest ownership of TikTok within 165 days. The bill now goes before the full House. Let's bring in Yahoo Finance's Dan Howley to give us the details. And obviously, this is bipartisan, something that we know has been in the works, but here we are now with this bill passed going through.

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, members of the Energy and Commerce Committee voted 50-0 to advance this legislation basically calling for, more or less, a ban on TikTok. But it's not exactly a ban. Essentially, if the legislation ends up getting passed, ByteDance would have 165 days to divest itself of TikTok so that it would be a full separation of the US operations and its China-based parent company.

If they don't do that, then Google, Apple, they wouldn't be able to host anything to do with TikTok after that point. So it's, more or less, a ban on the app. Now, because TikTok saw this obviously, as did everyone else, what they did was they started putting notifications when you open the app, telling users to reach out to their local representative and tell them they don't want to use the app.

According to some representatives, it was just basically, the only way to get into the app was to make a phone call. So some of them were getting calls and then hang-ups. But this is clearly TikTok's way of saying, you know, look, we're not going to take this lying down.

They say that they don't have access to Americans' user data-- or sorry, they say that ByteDance doesn't have access to Americans' user data, that the Chinese government doesn't have access to Americans' user data. But there have been some reports where there's been mention of workers in China at ByteDance having some access to US user data. And really, the fear here from the politicians' side is that if the Chinese government gets access to Americans' user data, they may be able to manipulate that in some way or get Americans to agree with a point of view that helps the Chinese government.

They say that this is an example of it by getting people to call their representatives. You know, you can argue that it's just being part of a civic-minded society. But there's the fear that this is the kind of mobilization that they don't want China to be able to do with regards to TikTok.

So we're going to have to see if this actually goes and passes the House. And then a version would have to go through the Senate as well. But President Biden is behind this, and it appears as though there's a lot of support if it's going 50-nothing in this committee.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah, lawmakers reportedly getting flooded with those calls from TikTok users. Always the fear, right, Dan? You don't want to upset some of those users. But we'll see where this goes. It has been an ongoing issue. Dan Howley, thanks so much.