TikTok’s US future hangs in the balance in court

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. A federal appeals court on Monday will consider whether the U.S. government has the right to force TikTok to sever ties with China to keep operating in this country.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is hearing arguments in a showdown over the future of the popular social-media app. A law signed by President Biden this spring requires TikTok’s parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, to sell the platform by Jan.

19 with a possible 90-day extension. The law doesn’t make it a crime to use TikTok, but it does prohibit mobile app stores from letting users download or update it. The sell-or-ban law gained bipartisan support after lawmakers received warnings from the intelligence community about China’s ability to exploit the app used by some 170 million Americans, roughly half of the population.

The U.S. government says China’s potential ability to use TikTok to wage information warfare and spy on Americans represents a national-security threat. And it argues that divestiture from Chinese ownership is the only assurance of defusing the danger.

ByteDance has said it can’t and won’t sell its U.S. operations by the deadline. The Chinese government has also signaled that it won’t allow a forced sale of TikTok to go through.

TikTok and several of its star content creators have claimed in lawsuits that the U.S. government crackdown on TikTok is based on speculative and secret security concerns in violation of the First Amendment. “Never before has Congress silenced so much speech in a single act," TikTok’s lawyers stated in a brief urging the panel to block the law.