The US Supreme Court on Wednesday decided to hear a bid by TikTok and its China-based parent company ByteDance until Jan. 19 to block legislation that would have forced it to sell the short video app or face a ban on national security grounds.
The judges opted to hear arguments on the matter in January, seeking an order to halt the looming ban against TikTok and ByteDance, as well as some of its users who did not act promptly on an emergency request to post content on the social media platform. 10.
The challengers are appealing a lower court ruling that upheld the law. TikTok is used by about 170 million Americans.
Congress passed the measure in April. The Department of Justice said that as a Chinese company, TikTok posed a “national-security threat of extreme depth and scale” due to its ability to covertly manipulate the vast amounts of data, location, and private messages of American users. Content Americans watch on the app. TikTok says it poses no threat to US security.
TikTok and ByteDance asked the Supreme Court on December 16 to pause the law, which they say violates free speech protections under the US Constitution’s First Amendment.
The companies said a shutdown for even a month would cause TikTok to lose a third of its US users and undermine its ability to attract advertisers and recruit talent for content creators and employees.
On Dec. 6, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington rejected the companies’ First Amendment arguments.
In their filing with the Supreme Court, TikTok and ByteDance said that “if Americans, informed of the perceived risk of manipulation of ‘secret’ content, choose to keep their eyes open and continue to view content on TikTok, the First Amendment empowers them to make that choice. Free from censorship.”
A US ban on TikTok would make the company far less valuable to ByteDance and its investors, and would hurt businesses that depend on TikTok to drive their sales.
Trump, who unsuccessfully tried to ban TikTok during his first term in 2020, has reversed his stance and vowed to try to save TikTok during this year’s presidential race. Trump said on December 16 that he has a warm heart for TikTok and that he will “look into” the matter.
Trump took office on January 20, days after the TikTok deadline under the law.
In its decision, the D.C. Circuit wrote, “The First Amendment exists to protect freedom of speech in the United States. Here the government acted only to protect that freedom from a foreign enemy nation and to limit an adversary’s ability to collect data on people in the United States.”
TikTok has denied sharing US user data or ever does, accusing US lawmakers of fueling concerns over the issue, and characterizing the ban as “a radical departure from this country’s tradition of championing an open internet”.
The dispute comes amid rising trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies after President Joe Biden’s administration imposed new restrictions on the Chinese chip industry and China banned exports of gallium, germanium and antimony to the United States.
The U.S. law would ban TikTok and other anti-foreign-controlled apps from offering certain services, including those offered through app stores such as Apple and Alphabet’s Google, effectively blocking its continued U.S. use unless ByteDance divests TikTok within a deadline.
A seamless ban could open the door to future crackdowns on other foreign-owned apps. In 2020, Trump also tried to ban WeChat, owned by the Chinese company Tencent, but was blocked by the courts.
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