January 10, 2025
3 min. read
US TikTok ban looms as Supreme Court hears arguments
TikTok is working on an ongoing basis: ByteDance, the owner of the appliance from China, must sell it by January 19, otherwise it is going to face a ban
Participants hold signs supporting TikTok in front of the U.S. Capitol constructing on March 13, 2024 in Washington, D.C.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
About 170 million people use TikTok within the U.S., but that number could plummet to zero if a bill signed by President Joe Biden goes into effect on Jan. 19. The law forces a alternative for ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok: It must either sell the app to an organization outside China or face a ban. ByteDance has repeatedly said the app isn’t on the market.
Instead, the corporate filed a lawsuit to maintain the TikTok app available within the US – and the case has now gone to the Supreme Court. In oral arguments on Friday, Noel Francisco, a lawyer for ByteDance’s U.S. subsidiary, TikTok, Inc., argued that the brand new law violates the subsidiary’s First Amendment rights, likening TikTok’s selection algorithm to editorial discretion. United States Attorney General Elizabeth Prelogar, speaking on behalf of the national government, stated that China has no right to govern US content under the First Amendment and stated that “the Chinese government could weaponize TikTok at any time to harm the United States. “
The Supreme Court is anticipated to issue a call inside the following nine days.
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Why is the clock ticking for TikTok?
Congress, which passed the TikTok bill with bipartisan support, says China’s influence over the platform poses a national security threat. The Department of Justice has also raised concerns in regards to the potential collection of non-public data from hundreds of thousands of U.S. users of the app and the potential “hidden manipulation” its content. (While there’s evidence that ByteDance shared non-U.S. user data with China, the U.S. government has provided no direct evidence that the corporate or its subsidiary meddled with U.S. users.)
What might occur?
If TikTok loses the case, “as I understand it, we’ll go in blind,” Francisco told the Supreme Court on Friday. Americans will now not give you the option to download or update TikTok from the Google or Apple app stores. ISPs would also face stiff penalties in the event that they allowed TikTok access to US users.
Americans may react in much the identical way as former TikTok users have elsewhere. After India banned the app in 2020, users turned to other types of short videos such as Instagram clips and Shorts on YouTube. You may also access blocked content via virtual private networksor VPNs, which might mask traffic to seem like coming from a rustic where TikTok has not been banned.
Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to delay interpreting the law until he takes office. An amicus transient filed on his behalf says his “excellent dealmaking expertise” could save the platform while solving national security concerns. Last September, Trump promised to save lots of the app, posting on his social media site Truth Social: “FOR ALL WHO WANT TO SAVE TIK TOK IN AMERICA, VOTE FOR TRUMP!” Legal scholars criticized Trump’s request for a delay.
Is a possible TikTok ban legal? Is this security theater?
Civil liberties and free speech groups oppose the ban, saying it violates Americans’ First Amendment rights. “Restricting citizens’ access to foreign media is a practice long associated with some of the world’s most repressive regimes, and it would be deeply unfortunate if the Supreme Court allowed this practice to take root here,” Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, said in a news release released by the institute on Thursday.
Some free speech experts argue that such a TikTok ban is more about political attitudes than user protection. Such a move does little to stop data brokers from selling details about U.S. users to foreign technology firms or intermediaries, who in turn may sell it to foreign governments. “Banning access to a single app does not ensure the security of Americans’ data coming from China or any other country,” he said Kate Ruanelawyer on the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a nonprofit civil rights organization, in an interview with Scientific American last 12 months.
