According to CNN, TikTok has sued to block U.S. law that could possibly force a nationwide ban of the popular app, following on legal threats the company issued after President Joe Biden signed the legislation last month. The court challenge sets up a historic legal battle, which will determine if the U.S. security concerns about TikTok’s links to China can override the First Amendment rights of TikTok’s 170 million U.S. users.
The stakes of the case are detrimental to TikTok. If it loses, TikTok could be banned from U.S. app stores unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sells the app to a non-Chinese entity by mid January 2025. In its petition filed at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, TikTok and Bytedance claim that the law is allegedly unconstitutional because it allegedly stifles Americans’ free speech and prevents them from accessing lawful information.
The petition claims the U.S. government allegedly “has taken the unprecedented step of expressly singling out and banning” the short-form video app in an allegedly unconstitutional exercise of congressional power. “For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban, and bars every American from participating in a unique online community with more than 1 billion people worldwide.” said the petition.
TikTok has denied claims that it has given Chinese government officials access to U.S. user data and says it has taken steps to protect that information by hosting the data on servers owned by U.S. tech giant Oracle.
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