As reported by Yahoo! News, on December 6th, a federal court in Washington, D.C., upheld a law that mandates either the sale or prohibition of TikTok, following a lawsuit filed by the social media giant against the federal government.
In its legal challenge, TikTok contended that a bill passed by Congress in April, which included provisions for a potential ban on the widely used app, constituted a violation of First Amendment rights. In response, the federal government argued that the ownership of TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, by China posed a significant national security threat, particularly given that over 170 million Americans utilize the platform each month.
Judge Douglas Ginsburg expressed the majority's findings in the opinion, stating, "We conclude the portions of the Act the petitioners have standing to challenge, that is the provisions concerning TikTok and its related entities, survive constitutional scrutiny. We therefore deny the petitions." He further elaborated, "The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary's ability to gather data on people in the United States."
In the aftermath of the ruling, TikTok announced its intention to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, asserting in a statement: "The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans' right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue." The company added, "Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people. The TikTok ban, unless stopped, will silence the voices of over 170 million Americans here in the US and around the world on January 19th, 2025."
The ruling drew criticism from civil liberties advocates, who cautioned that it could establish a dangerous precedent for government censorship of online speech. Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the ACLU National Security Project, stated, “Banning TikTok blatantly violates the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans who use this app to express themselves and communicate with people around the world. The government cannot shut down an entire communications platform unless it poses extremely serious and imminent harm, and there's no evidence of that here.”
TikTok's potential appeal to the Supreme Court could determine the future of the ban, which, if enforced, would make it illegal for app stores and web hosting companies to distribute or update the TikTok app for American users. The federal government justified Congress setting a nine-month ultimatum for ByteDance to divest from TikTok, citing "serious concerns about the threat to national security posed by TikTok" stemming primarily from its Chinese ownership and the perception of China as a geopolitical rival to the United States.
TikTok's legal argument, which was merged with another lawsuit filed by creators who use the platform, claimed the government did not present substantial evidence linking the Chinese Communist Party to the app and that a ban would infringe upon free speech rights. The company maintained that such a ban risks enabling the government to leverage “national security” as rationale for suppressing other platforms, including print and digital media outlets that “own and publish innovative and unique speech.”
President-elect Donald Trump, who is set to be inaugurated for a second term in January, has varied his stance on TikTok over the years.
In August 2020, while in office, he signed an executive order threatening a ban on TikTok unless ByteDance sold the app to mitigate “disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party,” including purportedly “debunked conspiracy theories about the origins of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus.” Federal courts blocked Trump’s attempt to ban TikTok shortly thereafter.
While campaigning for reelection, Trump appeared to revise his position on the app. In a March interview with CNBC, he stated that he did not support a ban, suggesting it would merely redirect users to rival platforms such as Facebook, which he labeled the “enemy of the people.” In June, he even launched his own TikTok account to bolster his 2024 presidential campaign, now boasting over 14 million followers, though he has not posted since the election.
In a contrast to Trump, President Biden, who signed the bill advocating for the TikTok ban, also created a TikTok account for his reelection efforts around the same time.
In a Truth Social post from September, Trump asserted he would “save TikTok in America” if he were victorious in the upcoming election. Yet, while Trump seems to lean towards supporting TikTok, the conservative agenda within Project 2025, devised by the Heritage Foundation for the next Republican administration, opposes the app. Although Trump claims disassociation from Project 2025, his proposed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair, Brendan Carr, and pick for the head of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, are Project 2025 authors openly advocating for the app's ban.
Additional government officials who have criticized TikTok have also turned to the platform themselves. Among them is Vice President-elect JD Vance, who amassed over 2 million followers and supported the ban earlier this year, and Karoline Leavitt, the incoming press secretary, who has over 37,000 followers despite deeming the app the “bane of our society right now” in a December 2023 Fox News interview.
Conversely, figures like Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman and Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, alongside Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his choice for the Department of Health and Human Services, have spoken out against the TikTok ban while simultaneously enjoying followings of over 1 million each on the app.
Should ByteDance fail to sell TikTok within the specified timeframe and the ban be enacted, it would render it illegal for app stores and web hosting entities in the United States to distribute or update the application.
India's experience, where TikTok and numerous other Chinese-owned apps were banned four years ago following a military confrontation with China, offers insight into the potential ramifications in the U.S. India had roughly 200 million TikTok users at that time, making it the nation with the largest user base outside of China.
In the wake of the ban, former TikTok users in India gravitated towards Google's YouTube Shorts and Instagram's Reels. Should a similar outcome unfold in the U.S., it could create a scenario that contradicts both Trump’s and Biden’s warnings about permitting particular tech giants to amass excessive power and influence.
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