TikTok and its parent company, Byte Dance, have filed a lawsuit against a new American law that would ban the popular video-sharing app in the US unless it is sold to an approved buyer. The lawsuit claims that the law unfairly singles out TikTok and is an unprecedented attack on free speech. ByteDance alleges that the law vaguely paints its ownership of TikTok as a national security threat without any evidence to support this claim. The company argues that the law is unconstitutional and is merely being portrayed as a way to regulate TikTok's ownership.
A social media company called Byte Dance has filed a lawsuit in a Washington appeals court against a law that was signed by President Joe Biden as part of a larger foreign aid package. The law bans every American from participating in a social media platform called TikTok, which has over 1 billion users worldwide. This is the first time that Congress has enacted a law that targets a single, named speech platform. It could also lead to a potential ban for the company. Free speech advocates believe that such a move is expected from repressive regimes like those in Iran and China. This legal fight could end up before the Supreme Court, and if TikTok loses, it says it would have to shut down next year.
The law requires Byte Dance to sell the platform to a U.S.-approved buyer within nine months. If a sale is already in progress, the company would get another three months to complete the deal. Byte Dance has said it doesn’t plan to sell TikTok. But even if it wanted to divest, the company would need Beijing's blessing. According to the lawsuit, the Chinese government has “made clear” that it wouldn't allow Byte Dance to include the algorithm that populates users' feeds and has been the “key to the success of TikTok in the United States.” TikTok and Byte Dance say the new law leaves them with no choice but to shut down by next Jan. 19 because continuing to operate in the U.S. wouldn't be commercially, technologically or legally possible. They also say it would be impossible for Byte Dance to divest its U.S. TikTok platform as a separate entity from the rest of TikTok, which has 1 billion users worldwide — most of them outside of the United States. A U.S.-only TikTok would operate as an island that's detached from the rest of the world, the lawsuit argues.
The suit also paints divestment as a technological impossibility, since the law requires all of TikTok's millions of lines of software code to be wrested from Byte Dance so that there would be no “operational relationship” between the Chinese company and the new U.S. app. The companies argue that they should be protected by the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of expression and are seeking a declaratory judgment that it is unconstitutional.
On Tuesday, no comments were made by The US Department of Justice concerning the lawsuit. When it comes to inquiries about the president’s persistence in using TikTok for political campaigns, she didn’t want to be hooked into talking to Karina Jean-Pierre who instead preferred pointing at campaign headquarters for the answer. It was during the week when Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Member of Parliament (MP) from Illinois belonging to Democratic Party there, broke his silence by calling out against this Act adopted yesterday. "This is the only way to address the national security threat posed by Byte Dance's ownership of apps like TikTok. Instead of continuing its deceptive tactics, it’s time for Byte Dance to start the divestment process,” he said.
Gus Hurwitz, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School, said that ByteDance is expected to request the courts to stop the federal law from becoming effective immediately first. Moreover, whether this injunction will be given is all that matters since Byte Dance will have to dispose TikTok before we can address its underlying merits in case it is not granted.
This remains an unanswered question to Hurwitz because it comes down to how important free speech can be and taking the Biden administration’s security claims into account. “In my view, the courts will be more likely to yield to Congress over such matters,” he predicts.
The fight over TikTok comes amid a broader U.S.-China rivalry, especially in areas such as advanced technologies and data security that are seen as essential to each country’s economic prowess and national security.
“We are all afraid that ByteDance will be told to give the PRC user data, or it will manipulate the algorithm for creating artificial feed generation, and hence change their opinions,” United States lawmakers cross both party lines, as well as administrators together with the people dealing with law matters reported. This analysis also points at Rutgers University research finding that certain types of TikTok posts were highlighted while others were downplayed depending on whether they were in line with PRC policy. It is worth noting that the owners of the platform have refuted these allegations.”
Critics of the rule argue that there cannot be any assurance that the Chinese government or any other evil individuals can't get data on Americans from various other sources such as commercial data brokers who lease or sell personal information They argue that the U.S.A. government has failed to produce any public proof indicating that TikTok has given away American user data or rigged its algorithms in favor of China. "Data collection by apps has real consequences for everyone's privacy," said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the ACLU's National Security Project. "However, banning a social media platform used by millions of people globally is not a solution. Instead, we need Congress to pass laws that protect our privacy in the first place."
In a statement, Jameel Jaffer, who is the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, anticipates that the law suit by TikTok will succeed. "This case has no such reason," that was how he said it referring to “First Amendment does not allow the American government to stop its citizens from receiving information, ideas or foreign media unless there is a valid ground for doing so.”
It is uncertain if TikTok will be able to defend itself properly in the current case despite its past successes in the court. Some argue that since both political parties support the federal statute that TikTok allegedly breaches, judges might lean towards trusting Congress when they declare TikTok as one of the threats to American security. Nevertheless, without knowledge of precisely which dangers come into play this makes it quite hard to comprehend why such an atypical piece of legislation would find favor with any judge.
