The News
The US Supreme Court on Friday appeared inclined to uphold a law that would require TikTok to be banned in the country unless it divested from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance.
The legal debate over the app pits national security concerns against free speech, with ByteDance arguing that the ban violates the latter. But the justices appeared skeptical of that argument: Justice Brett Kavanaugh mentioned examples of the US prohibiting broadcasting companies from having foreign government ties, and Justice Samuel Alito questioned if Americans are actually harmed by a ban or whether their attachment to TikTok is akin to that of “an old article of clothing” that can be shed.
ByteDance has recently promoted another video sharing app it owns — Lemon8 — pointing to a possible backup plan if the nation’s highest court forces TikTok’s removal from app stores on Jan. 19.
The court’s ruling is likely to come at the end of next week. The decision “will be among the most consequential of the digital age, as TikTok has become a cultural phenomenon,” The New York Times wrote.
J.D. Capelouto contributed to this report.
SIGNALS
Trump’s pro-TikTok stance pits him against Republican allies
US President-elect Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to block the ban, which passed in Congress with bipartisan support last year, so his administration can find a “political resolution” that keeps TikTok in the US and addresses national security concerns. Trump has expressed support for the app — which he said helped him capture some of the youth vote this election — reversing his 2020 position when he tried to force its sale to a US company. Trump’s current pro-TikTok stance pits him against many members of his party who want the platform outlawed, including 22 Republican state attorneys general who asked the conservative-majority Supreme Court to uphold the law. District and appellate courts have ruled against TikTok.
TikTok ban would be another flashpoint in tense US-China relations
A TikTok ban would become the latest flashpoint in tense US-China trade relations, sending “a clear message to other players in China’s tech sector that their products aren’t welcome in the US market,” a Bloomberg Asia tech columnist wrote. China could likely offer a tit-for-tat response, but economic strains and geopolitical concerns may “limit its ability or willingness to engage in aggressive retaliation,” two China Law Blog experts predicted. A US ban would immediately impact American TikTok users, not Beijing, an expert argued in the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs: A third of US adults use TikTok, and the share of users who get news from there has more than doubled since 2020, according to Pew Research.
US scrutiny of TikTok is hypocritical, some argue
The US would be the first Western liberal democracy to ban TikTok, but several other countries have moved against the platform, The New York Times reported: Romania annulled its presidential election over concerns of foreign interference on TikTok, and Albania banned the app for a year. Some experts argue that the backlash may betray a double standard: While Big Tech is increasingly under scrutiny, US companies like Google and Meta simply “do not face the mistrust that TikTok has” in the West, the CEO of a Singapore-based consultancy told The Times. That the Biden administration largely gave up trying to control disinformation on domestic social media platforms only lends credence to Chinese officials’ claims of hypocrisy, a columnist argued in The Diplomat last year.