Biden signed a law banning the app in January – if parent firm ByteDance fails to block it, here’s what could happen
The US supreme court upheld a law signed by Joe Biden that banned the short-form video app beginning on Sunday. The company was given the option to divest from ByteDance to avoid the ban, but TikTok has said divestment is “not possible technologically, commercially, or legally” and requested an injunction to pause the ban during the legal process.
More than 170 million Americans use TikTok. Lawyers for the company contend that banning the app violates the first amendment rights of those tens of millions of users; the argument did not sway a federal appeals court, which upheld the ban-or-sale bill in December. Congress passed the legislation with a bipartisan majority in April. US legislators fear that China will spread propaganda through the app, though they have produced no documentation of such manipulation. That said, the supreme court wrote in its opinion that even if China had not yet attempted to exert its influence over the platform, that there was “substantial evidence” to suggest it could one day do so.
