Eight TikTok content creators sued the U.S. government on Tuesday over a new federal law that would ban the popular social media platform nationwide unless its China-based parent company sells its shares within a year. I filed an objection.
Lawyers for the creators argue in the lawsuit that the law violates users' First Amendment rights to free speech, a legal argument the company made in a separate lawsuit filed last week. repeated.Legal challenge could finally come to an end in front of the supreme court.
The complaint filed Tuesday includes a Texas-based rancher who has previously appeared in TikTok commercials, and an Arizona-based rancher who uses TikTok to share his daily life and spread awareness about LGBTQ issues. from a variety of content creators, including creators. He is the owner of a business that sells skin care products on TikTok Shop, the e-commerce arm of the platform.
Creators “rely on TikTok to express themselves, learn, advocate for causes, share opinions, build community, and even make a living,” according to the complaint.
“They found their voices, amassed larger audiences, made new friends, and encountered new and different ways of thinking, all thanks to TikTok's novel ways to host, curate, and spread the word.” They added that the new law would take away their rights. And the rest of the country has “this unique means of expression and communication.”
A TikTok spokesperson said the company is paying the legal costs of the lawsuit filed in the Washington Court of Appeals. The firm is led by the same law firm that represented creators who challenged Montana's statewide ban on the platform last year. In November, a judge blocked the law from going into effect.
The federal law comes as the U.S. and China are at bitter strategic odds on a number of issues, and the two countries continue to be at odds over sensitive geopolitical topics, including China's support for Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. It was done. U.S. lawmakers and other administration officials have expressed concern about how well TikTok protects users' data from Chinese authorities and the possibility that its algorithms could be used to spread pro-Beijing propaganda. TikTok claims that there is, but TikTok disputes this.
Under the law, TikTok's parent company ByteDance would be required to sell the platform to an approved buyer within nine months. If the sale is in progress, the company will receive a three-month extension before the transaction is completed.
However, TikTok and ByteDance say: I filed their lawsuit last week. It said it would be forced to close by January 19 next year because it is not commercially, technically or legally possible to continue operating in the United States.
They argue that it is impossible for ByteDance to sell the U.S. TikTok platform as a separate entity from the rest of TikTok, which has 1 billion users worldwide, most of them outside the U.S. did. U.S.-only TikTok will operate as an island, cut off from the rest of the world, the lawsuit alleges. The Chinese government, which must also approve such sales, has also “made clear” that it will not allow the sale of the recommendation algorithm that enters users' feeds and is “key to TikTok's success in the United States.” He also said. state. ”
Creator lawsuit participant Brian Firebaugh, a Hubbard, Texas-based rancher, said in an interview that he created his TikTok account in 2020 to help build his brand and market the cattle products he sells online. He said he started. This decision allowed him to quit his full-time job and live off the income he was making from TikTok, where he currently has over 430,000 followers.
Firebaugh, 44, said TikTok has also allowed him to build an online community with other ranchers, given him the opportunity to participate in a reality show on Netflix, and used the winnings to help him and his wife adopt a son. He said he now has the time to go through the adoption process. He said losing TikTok would disrupt everything.
“100 percent of our customers come from TikTok,” Firebaugh said. “To eliminate that, you're now taking money where my family's mouth is.”
Chloe Joy Sexton, a 29-year-old content creator who lives in Memphis, Tennessee and runs a cookie business called Chloe's Giant Cookies, said she started experimenting with TikTok four years ago after losing her previous job. Sexton said that while she posted content on other social media platforms, it was only on TikTok that her baking created a viral trajectory. Currently, she has more than 2 million followers on the app and shares more intimate details about her own life, including losing her mother to brain cancer and subsequently adopting her younger sister. Details are also shared.
“There is absolutely no evidence that my information or anyone else's information is at risk,” said Sexton, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “Nobody offered that, not the government, not anyone else. And this tug-of-war of changing my life based on a hypothetical basis for this purchase is very detrimental to me personally, because that Because my government is not going to protect me at this point.”
The producers are asking the court to declare the law unconstitutional and to issue an order blocking Attorney General Merrick Garland from enforcing it.
