TikTok on Sunday reiterated its free speech concerns over a House-passed bill that would ban the popular social media app from the U.S. if Chinese owner ByteDance doesn’t sell its stake for a year .

The House passed the legislation Saturday by a margin of 360 to 58. The bill now heads to the Senate, where it could be voted on in the coming days. President Joe Biden has previously said he would sign legislation regarding TikTok.

Many U.S. lawmakers from Republicans, Democrats and the Biden administration have said TikTok poses a national security risk because China could force the company to share data on its 170 million U.S. users.

The move to include TikTok in a broader foreign aid package could speed up the timeline for a potential ban after an earlier separate bill stalled in the Senate.

“Unfortunately, the House of Representatives has once again used the guise of critical foreign and humanitarian aid to block a ban bill that would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans,” TikTok said in a statement.

TikTok in February criticized the original bill that ultimately stalled in the Senate, saying it would “censor millions of Americans.” Similarly, the company also argued that a state ban on TikTok passed in Montana last year violated the First Amendment.

The American Civil Liberties Union opposed the House bill on free speech grounds.

TikTok insists it has never shared U.S. data and never will.

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Sunday that TikTok could be used as a propaganda tool by the Chinese government, noting that “many young people” use TikTok to get news.

“We give the Communist Party so many propaganda tools and the ability to steal the personal data of 170 million Americans that it’s a national security risk,” he told CBS News.

Free speech group Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute said the latest bill has “no real payoff” because China and other U.S. rivals could still buy Americans’ data from brokers on the open market and exploit it. information to carry out disinformation activities. A social media platform based in the United States.

Some Democrats have also raised free speech concerns about the ban and called for stronger data privacy legislation.

Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna told ABC News on Sunday that he believes a TikTok ban may not survive legal scrutiny in the courts, citing constitutional protections for free speech.

The House of Representatives voted on March 13 to give ByteDance about six months to divest TikTok’s U.S. assets or face a ban.

The legislation passed on Saturday sets a nine-month deadline that can be extended by three months if the president wants to determine the progress of the sale.

Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell expressed support for the latest bill. She had earlier asked the House to amend some details in the March 13 bill.

TikTok was also a topic of discussion during Biden’s phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this month. Biden expressed concerns about the app’s ownership.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)