TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance are suing the United States over a law that bans the popular video-sharing app unless it is sold to another company, vaguely calling it a national security threat to circumvent the First Amendment. It is claimed that
The lawsuit, which was widely expected to be filed Tuesday, could possibly be the culprit for what's to come. long legal battle The future of TikTok in the United States could end up in the Supreme Court. If TikTok loses, it says it will be forced to shut down next year.
The popular social video company said it was the law set by President Joe Biden. signed The measure, part of a $95 billion foreign aid package, is “clearly unconstitutional,” and its proponents are trying to portray it as a regulation of TikTok's ownership rather than a ban. It's the first time the U.S. government has named a social media company for possible ban, but free speech advocates say the practice is more common in repressive regimes such as Iran and China. .
“Congress has endorsed TikTok, a vibrant online forum for protected speech and expression that 170 million Americans use to create, share, and watch videos on the Internet. “We have taken the unprecedented step of explicitly identifying and prohibiting these activities,” ByteDance said in its lawsuit. Federal Court of Appeals in Washington, DC: “For the first time in history, Congress subjects a single designated speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban, banning all Americans from participating in multiple online communities'' ” for billions of people around the world. ”
The law requires TikTok's parent company ByteDance to sell the platform within nine months. If a sale is already in progress, the company will have an additional three months to complete the transaction. ByteDance said it has “no plans to sell TikTok.”However, even if the company wanted to sell To get blessings from Beijing. According to the complaint, the Chinese government has “made clear” that it will not allow ByteDance to sell its recommendation engine, which is “key to TikTok's success in the United States.”
TikTok and ByteDance argued in the lawsuit that they were not given a choice.
“The 'qualified sale' required by the Act to allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States is commercially, technically, and legally impossible,” they said.
“There is no question: this law will force a shutdown of TikTok by January 19, 2025,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit argues that ByteDance cannot 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. are doing. According to the complaint, TikTok, which is limited to the United States, will operate as an island, isolated from the rest of the world.
TikTok also painted the sale as technically impossible. The law requires ByteDance to extract all of TikTok's millions of lines of software code to ensure there is no “operating relationship” between the Chinese company and the new U.S. app.
“Specifically, in order to comply with the law's divestment requirements, that codebase would have to be moved to a large alternative engineering team. That team does not exist and the complex code required to run the platform ,” the lawsuit states.
Both parties argued that it should be protected by the First Amendment's freedom of expression guarantee. They are seeking a declaratory judgment that the law violates the U.S. Constitution. An order directing Attorney General Merrick Garland to enforce the Act and provide such further relief as the court deems appropriate.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the lawsuit Tuesday. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also declined to answer questions about why the president continues to use TikTok for political activities, postponing his campaign.
ByteDance will likely first ask the court to temporarily block the federal law from taking effect, said Gus Hurwitz, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Carey Law School. And the decision to grant such a preliminary injunction could decide the case, he said. In his absence, he said, “ByteDance will need to sell TikTok before this lawsuit is resolved.”
It remains unclear to Hurwitz whether a court would grant such an injunction, largely because of the balance between important free speech issues and the Biden administration's claims of harm to national security. This is because it is necessary to take “The courts will be very respectful of Congress on these issues,” he said.
The dispute over TikTok comes as U.S.-China relations are moving toward intense strategic rivalry, particularly in areas such as advanced technology and data security that are essential to each country's economic strength and national security. .
Not only U.S. lawmakers of both parties, but also government and law enforcement officials. express concern Chinese authorities say they could force ByteDance to hand over U.S. user data or manipulate the algorithms that populate user feeds to sway public opinion. Some point to a Rutgers University study that found TikTok content to be fraudulent. magnified or undervalued It is based on how the company aligns with the disputed Chinese government's interests.
Opponents of the law argue that Chinese authorities and other nefarious groups could easily obtain information about Americans in other ways, such as through commercial data brokers who rent or sell personal information. . They point out that the U.S. government has not provided any public evidence that TikTok is sharing U.S. user information with Chinese authorities or tinkering with its algorithms to benefit China.
“Data collection by apps has real implications for all of our privacy,” said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the ACLU's National Security Project. “But banning one social media platform used by millions of people around the world is not the solution. Instead, we need Congress to pass laws that protect our privacy in the first place. is needed.”
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, is hopeful that the challenge to TikTok's ban will be successful.
“The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution means that the government cannot restrict Americans' access to ideas, information, or media from abroad without a very good reason. does not exist,” Jafar said in a printed statement.
TikTok has won previous First Amendment challenges, but it's unclear whether this case will be that simple.
“The bipartisan nature of this federal law may make it more likely that judges will defer to Congress' determination that the company poses a national security risk,” said Cornell Law School professor and constitutional reformer. said Gautam Hans, deputy director of the Article 1 Clinic. “But without a public discussion of what exactly the risks are, it is difficult to determine why a court would need to justify such an unprecedented law.”
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Associated Press writers David Hamilton and Seung-min Kim contributed to this report.
