TikTok ban approved by US Supreme Court, unless sold by Chinese parent company ByteDance!
The U.S. Supreme Court voted unanimously on Friday to uphold a federal law that bans TikTok starting Sunday unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. The ruling said the national security risk posed by its ties to China outweighed concerns about restricting speech by the app or its 170 million users in the United States.
A sale doesn't seem imminent, and experts have said the app won't disappear from existing users' phones after the law goes into effect on Jan. 19. However, new users won't be able to download it and updates won't be available. That will ultimately render the app useless, the U.S. Justice Department said in court filings.
The decision came amid unusual political agitation by President-elect Donald Trump, who has vowed he can negotiate a solution, and the administration of President Joe Biden, which has signaled it will not enforce the law starting Sunday, his final day in office.
Trump, aware of TikTok’s popularity and his 14.7 million followers on the app, finds himself on the opposite side of the argument from prominent Senate Republicans, who blame TikTok’s Chinese owner for not finding a buyer sooner. It’s unclear what options are open to Trump after he is sworn in as president on Monday. The law allowed a 90-day pause in restrictions on the app if there was progress toward a sale before it took effect.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who defended the law in the Supreme Court for the Democratic Biden administration, told the justices last week that it is uncertain whether the prospect of a sale, once the law takes effect, could trigger a 90-day deadline for TikTok.
In arguments, the judges were told by a lawyer for TikTok's parent company and ByteDance Ltd in China how difficult it would be to reach an agreement, especially since Chinese law restricts the sale of the proprietary algorithm that has made the social media platform wildly successful.
The app allows users to watch hundreds of videos in about half an hour, some of which are just a few seconds long, according to a lawsuit filed last year by Kentucky. The lawsuit alleged that TikTok is designed to be addictive and harm children’s mental health, with more than a dozen states filing similar lawsuits. TikTok has called the allegations false.
The dispute over TikTok's ties to China has come to epitomize the geopolitical competition between Washington and Beijing. The United States has said it is concerned about TikTok's collection of a large amount of user data, including sensitive information on viewing habits, which could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion.
Officials have also warned that the algorithm that drives what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who could use it to shape content on the platform in a way that is difficult to detect.
TikTok stresses that the US has not presented evidence that China has attempted to manipulate content on its US platform or collect data on American users through TikTok, and has long denied that it could be used as a tool of Beijing.
A bipartisan majority in Congress approved the legislation. Biden signed it into law in April, culminating a years-long saga in Washington over TikTok, which the government sees as a national security threat.
TikTok sued the government last year over the law, but a three-judge panel made up of two Republican appointees and one Democratic appointee unanimously upheld it in December, prompting TikTok's swift appeal to the Supreme Court.
Without a sale to an approved buyer, the law bars app stores operated by Apple, Google and others from offering TikTok starting Sunday. Web hosting services will also be banned from hosting TikTok. ByteDance has said it will not sell. However, some investors have eyed it, including former Trump Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire businessman Frank McCourt.
McCourt's Project Liberty initiative said it and its unnamed partners have submitted a proposal to ByteDance to buy TikTok's U.S. assets, although the consortium, which includes "Shark Tank" host Kevin O'Leary, did not disclose the financial terms of the offer. Prelogar told the judges last week that the law's enactment "could just be the jolt" ByteDance needs to reconsider its position.
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