TikTok has started the fight for its future in the US as it kicks off its appeal against a law that will see it banned come January.
As things stand, ByteDance, the Chinese owner of the app, must sell the US side of its operations to an American company or face shutdown.
The court case comes after months of heightening concerns about national security and whether the Chinese government has access to data on the current 170 million TikTok users in the US.
Is TikTok Ban an Intrusion on Free Speech Rights?
The appeals hearing starts today and will be heard in front of a three-judge panel in Washington DC.
ByteDance is expected to argue that the law behind the ban – which was signed in April by President Biden – violates the First Amendment. The company hasn’t held back, panning the law as an “extraordinary intrusion on free speech rights.”
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According to BBC News, the TikTok legal team is bringing a group of eight creators to court to talk about the impact the potential ban will have on their livelihoods.
TikTok: National Security Issue?
The US Department of Justice, which will also lay out its case, argues that it has evidence that TikTok has been shipping data from its US users to China. It alleges that this data is not ring-fenced from the Chinese Government and contains sensitive information including opinions of divisive topics including “gun control, abortion, and religion”.
While critics are arguing that the DoJ hasn’t revealed enough evidence, it remains firm that the First Amendment goes out of the window in cases of national security. It argues that China is a rogue country so stakes are high for this case.
No Quick Resolution for TikTok
However, this case will also set a precedent as US authorities – and authorities around the world – scrutinize the potential harm that companies from nations including Russia and China could have.
Russian venture, Kaspersky, has now closed down its US operations after being banned from trading in the US.
The case is expected to last for months not weeks, which could see the January deadline extended. In the meanwhile, TikTok is trudging on and has just launched its US Election Center.
In an interesting side story, TikTok’s fate has also become a political soapbox. Donald Trump, who was no fan of the social media platform, has now decided to champion it. Apparently the former president is now “big” on TikTok and would reverse the ban that he was initially behind.
TikTok faced his ire when a grassroots TikTok campaign sought to sabotage the ticket application process for what actually turned out to be a sparsely attended Trump rally. However, Trump is now obviously eyeing up TikTok’s US users so his national security concerns have apparently disappeared.
