TikTok made a last-ditch effort Monday to continue operating in the United States, asking the Supreme Court to temporarily block a law aimed at forcing ByteDance, its China-based parent company, to abandon the short-form video app on Jan. 19 or face a ban.
TikTok and ByteDance have filed an emergency appeal to the justices for an injunction to stop an upcoming ban on the social media app used by about 170 million Americans while appealing a lower court ruling that upheld the law. A group of American app users filed a similar request on Monday.
Congress passed the law in April. The Justice Department said that as a Chinese company, TikTok poses a “national security threat of great depth and scale” because of its access to vast amounts of information about American users, from locations to private messages, and its ability to manipulate privacy. content that Americans view on the app.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington on 6 Dec. rejected TikTok’s arguments that the law violated free speech protections under the US Constitution’s First Amendment.
In their statement to the Supreme Court, TikTok and ByteDance argued that “if the American people, reasonably aware of the alleged dangers of manipulating ‘private’ content, choose to continue to view content on TikTok with their eyes open, the First Amendment empowers them to make that choice, without government scrutiny.” .”
“And if the D.C. Circuit holds otherwise, then Congress will have a free hand to prevent any American from speaking by presenting a certain risk that the speech will be influenced by a foreign organization,” they added.
The companies said a shutdown of even one month would cause TikTok to lose about a third of its US users and reduce its ability to attract advertisers and hire content creators and staff talent.
Calling itself one of the “most important speech platforms” used in the United States, TikTok has said there is no imminent threat to US national security and that the delay in enforcing the law will allow the Supreme Court to review the legality of the ban, and the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump to review the law.
Trump, who unsuccessfully tried to block TikTok during his first term in 2020, has changed his stance and promised in the presidential race this year that he would try to save TikTok. Trump takes office on January 20, a day after TikTok’s deadline under the law.
The law would “shut down one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration,” the companies said in their filing. “The federal law to designate and block a speech platform used by half of the American people is extraordinary.”
Asked on Monday at a press conference what he would do to stop the TikTok ban, Trump said he “has a warm place in my heart for TikTok” and that he would “look into” the issue.
Trump met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew in Florida on Monday, a source familiar with the plans told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the meeting.
The companies asked the Supreme Court to rule on their request on January 6 to allow, if rejected, the “hard work of shutting down TikTok” in the United States and to coordinate with service providers by a deadline. prescribed under the law.
The dispute comes amid trade tensions between China and the United States, two of the world’s largest economies.
‘Strict Testing’
TikTok has denied that it has or had ever shared data on US users, accusing US lawmakers of furthering speculation.
TikTok spokesman Michael Hughes said after the filing that “we are asking the court to do what it has done in free speech cases: apply strict scrutiny to the ban on speech and conclude that it violates the First Amendment.”
In its decision, the DC Circuit wrote, “The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here the government acted only to protect that freedom from a foreign enemy nation and to limit that enemy’s ability to collect information on the people of the United States.”
The law would have prohibited providing certain services to TikTok and other apps controlled by foreign adversaries including offering them through app stores such as Apple and Alphabet’s Google, effectively preventing their continued use in the US unless ByteDance divests TikTok by a deadline.
The ban could open the door to US bans on other foreign apps. In 2020, Trump tried to block WeChat, which is owned by the Chinese company Tencent, but was blocked by the courts.
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