Chinese-owned social media app TikTok faced a barrage of questions today from a U.S. appeals court as the company fights to block a law that will ban the app in the U.S. if it’s not sold.
In April, President Joe Biden signed legislation that meant TikTok’s owner, ByteDance Ltd, had one year to sell the app, or face being removed from Google Play and Apple Inc.’s App Store. For years, various officials in the U.S. have stated how the app is a threat to U.S. national security, something TikTok vehemently denies.
Today in court, facing some tough questions from a three-judge panel, TikTok attempted to explain why the ban would be unconstitutional. “The law before this court is unprecedented, and its effect would be staggering,” TikTok’s attorney Andrew Pincus said. “For the first time in history, Congress has expressly targeted a specific U.S. speaker banning its speech and the speech of 170 million Americans.”
The three judges concentrated their questions mainly around two topics: How can the U.S. be sure the app isn’t sharing data with the Chinese government and what will TikTok do to ensure the algorithm isn’t exploited by bad actors to start sharing harmful propaganda?
TikTok’s lawyers and advocates argued that the app should have First Amendment protections. The judges responded by asking if an app controlled outside the U.S. should even have such protections. Judge Sri Srinivasan asked if, hypothetically, there was a war, should Congress be able to ban an adversary’s ownership of a media company?
Pincus cited the news outlet, Politico, which is owned by the German conglomerate, Axel Springer. He also mentioned Al Jazeera. Both of these companies are indeed given constitutional protection, to which Judge Neomi Rao responded by saying those companies are not owned by an “adversary.”
Throughout the hearing, the judges sounded skeptical of TikTok’s request for them to second-guess the U.S. government. TikTok’s lawyers took another approach, bringing in American content creators who rely on the app for their businesses. They argued that a ban breached their constitutional rights and that TikTok provides a “novel way of hosting, curating and disseminating speech” that they can’t find with other social media apps.
“The ban sets a dangerous precedent for the government telling us how and with who we can communicate,” said one of the creators “I can’t stand for that, which is why I’m a part of this lawsuit.”
The case will likely head to the U.S. Supreme Court before a possible ban comes into effect in January.