A US appeals court on Friday upheld a law requiring TikTok’s owner ByteDance to sell the platform or face a US ban next year, dealing a major blow to the Chinese company behind the video app.
The law, signed by US president Joe Biden earlier this year, orders TikTok to be banned in the country if the app does not divest from its parent ByteDance by January 19th, 2025 – the day before Donald Trump is inaugurated as president.
The ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the government’s national security “justifications” for the law were “compelling”.
The law hits at the core of a hot-button national security issue involving the wildly popular app, and received strong bipartisan support in Congress.
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US officials have argued that ByteDance could be compelled to share the personal information of the 170 million US TikTok users with officials in Beijing under Chinese law, and wield the app’s algorithms and moderation to spread propaganda and misinformation. The US Department of Justice earlier this year alleged that some of TikTok’s US user data had been stored in China.
The law faces an uncertain political future, however. On the campaign trail before his re-election, as both parties turned to the app as a key part of their get-out-the-vote strategy, Mr Trump said he opposed a TikTok ban and promised to “save” the app.
In May, TikTok and ByteDance sued the US government to block the bill, claiming it was unconstitutional and violated First Amendment protections for free speech. TikTok has denied the Chinese government has any control over the app or that it has handed over any data to Beijing. Its lawyers also argued that concerns about propaganda on the app should be handled by requiring disclosures, rather than a blanket divest-or-ban law.
TikTok has complained that much of the US government’s evidence is classified, meaning it has not had the opportunity to rebuff the claims about it, and argued that a sale would be “unfeasible”.
Beijing has publicly said it would not allow the divestiture of the platform’s recommendations algorithm by ByteDance, and has export control laws that would block such a spin-off.
Now, TikTok’s fate in the US remains unclear.
TikTok is likely to take its appeal to the Supreme Court, and seek a court order temporarily stopping the law from coming into effect while awaiting a further decision. Mr Biden could also extend the ban-or-sale deadline by 90 days.
Before his re-election, Mr Trump said he would not ban TikTok upon his return to the White House, in a bid to preserve “competition” in a market dominated by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which the president-elect has described as an “enemy of the people”.
It is unclear exactly how he might save the app as promised. Experts suggested he could tell Congress to repeal the law, or pressure the Department of Justice not to enforce it. – Copyright The Financial Times
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