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Written by David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – TikTok and its Chinese parent ByteDance on Thursday urged a U.S. court to overturn a law they say would ban the popular short-form video app in the United States on January 19, saying the U.S. government has refused to participate in any serious settlement talks after 2022.
Legislation signed by President Joe Biden in April gives ByteDance until January 19 next year to divest TikTok’s US assets or face a ban on the app used by 170 million Americans. ByteDance says the divestment is “not technologically, commercially or legally feasible.”
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hold oral arguments on lawsuits brought by TikTok and ByteDance along with TikTok users on September 16. TikTok’s future in the United States may depend on the outcome of the case, which could affect how the United States is influenced. The government is using its new power to clamp down on foreign-owned apps.
“This law is a radical departure from this country’s tradition of championing an open internet, and sets a dangerous precedent that allows political branches to target an unwanted speech platform and force it to be sold or shut down,” ByteDance and TikTok say in their government demand. Court to overturn the law.
Because of concerns among US lawmakers that China could access Americans’ data or spy on them through the app, the measure passed overwhelmingly in Congress just weeks after it was introduced.
Lawyers for a group of TikTok users who filed a lawsuit to prevent the app from being banned said the law would violate their rights to freedom of expression. In a filing on Thursday, they said there were clearly no imminent national security risks because the law “allows TikTok to continue operating through the rest of this year — including during an election that the president himself who signed the bill says is existential.” For the sake of our democracy.”
TikTok says any divestment or separation — even if technically possible — would take years, and argues that the law conflicts with Americans’ free speech rights.
Moreover, it says the law unfairly singles out TikTok for punitive treatment and “ignores many apps with large operations in China that collect large amounts of U.S. user data, as well as many U.S. companies that develop software and employ engineers in China.”
ByteDance recounted lengthy negotiations between the company and the US government that it says ended abruptly in August 2022. The company also published a redacted version of a 100-page draft national security agreement to protect US TikTok user data and says it has spent more than $2 billion on the effort.
The draft agreement included giving the US government a “kill switch” to suspend TikTok in the United States at the government’s sole discretion if the company did not comply with the agreement and says the United States demanded that TikTok’s source code be transferred out of China.
“This administration has decided that it would rather attempt to shut down TikTok in the United States and eliminate the platform of expression for 170 million Americans, than to continue working on a practical, feasible, and effective solution to protect American users through an enforceable system,” TikTok’s lawyers wrote. to the Department of Justice in an April 1 email that was posted Thursday.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the email, but said last month that the law “addresses critical national security concerns in a manner consistent with the First Amendment and other constitutional limitations.” She said she would defend the legislation in court.
In 2020, courts blocked then US President Donald Trump in his attempt to ban TikTok and Chinese-owned WeChat, a unit of Tencent, in the US.
The White House says it wants to end ownership of the app in China on national security grounds, not impose a ban on TikTok. Earlier this month, Trump joined TikTok and recently raised concerns about a potential ban.
App stores like Apple’s (NASDAQ:) and Google’s Alphabet (NASDAQ:) stores are prohibited by law from offering TikTok. It also prevents internet hosting services from supporting TikTok unless pulled by ByteDance.
