TikTok ban: all the news on attempts to ban the video platform

TikTok — an app used by 170 million Americans — now has its future resting in the hands of three judges. The company fought for its life during oral arguments on Monday only for the judges to express a great deal of skepticism toward TikTok’s case.

Attorneys for TikTok and a group of creators suing to block the law popularly known as “the TikTok ban” made their case before a panel of three judges on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Though the bill seeks a divestment of the app from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, by a January 19th deadline, the company says the ultimatum is, in truth, a ban that would stifle the speech of TikTok and its creators and improperly limit the information Americans are able to receive.

Next week, a court will hear arguments about whether the US government can ban TikTok, based on evidence it doesn’t want anyone — including the social media company — to see.

On September 16th, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hear oral arguments for TikTok v. Garland, TikTok’s First Amendment challenge to legislation that it claims amounts to a ban. It’s a fight not just about free speech but whether the Department of Justice can make a case using classified material that its opponent can’t review or argue against. The government argues TikTok is a clear national security threat but says that revealing why would be a threat, too.

TikTok says that the government didn’t adequately consider viable alternative options before charging ahead with a law that could ban the platform in the US. TikTok, whose parent company ByteDance is based in China, claims that it provided the US government with an extensive and detailed plan to mitigate national security risks and that this plan was largely ignored when Congress passed a law with a huge impact on speech.

In briefs filed at the DC Circuit Court on Thursday, both TikTok and a group of creators on the platform who’ve filed their own suit spelled out their case for why they believe the new law violates the First Amendment. The court is set to hear oral arguments in the case on September 16th, just a few months before the current divest-or-ban deadline of January 19th, 2025.

A report from Reuters says that work has been ongoing since last year to create a version of TikTok’s recommendation algorithm that operates independently from Douyin, the Chinese version of the app operated by its parent company ByteDance. According to the unnamed sources, completing the project could take more than a year as part of a plan to show lawmakers that the US business is independent of its owner in Beijing.

The report says executives have talked about the project in all-hands meetings and on the company’s internal messaging system, Lark. The sources also said that splitting the source code would cut TikTok off from the “massive engineering development power” of its parent company.

Eight TikTok creators are suing to stop a law that would ban the app unless its Chinese parent company divests it, arguing that the measure would strip them of their livelihoods and creative outlets.

The suit is similar to the company’s own challenge to the law in that it leans on First Amendment arguments, calls lawmakers’ concerns around the app speculative, and recalls that courts have blocked other methods of banning TikTok, including former President Donald Trump’s executive order and a Montana state law. But while the company’s suit details the alleged impracticality of separating TikTok from its owner ByteDance, the creators’ suit focuses squarely on how their own speech could be impacted if TikTok went away.

TikTok is suing the US government over the new law that would force the shortform video app to be divested from its China-based parent company ByteDance or face a ban in the US. In a court filing submitted Tuesday, TikTok says Congress has “taken the unprecedented step of expressly singling out and banning TikTok” and calls the move “unconstitutional.”

The complaint argues that a sale from ByteDance isn’t possible and that the law would “force a shutdown” by January 19th, 2025.

Immigration officers have interrogated more than 30 TikTok employees who traveled to the US, Forbes reports. Some workers at TikTok and its China-based parent company, ByteDance, have been pulled aside by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and held for additional questioning, according to the report. Many of the workers who have been singled out are Chinese nationals.

Some of the people who have been interrogated work in machine learning or data engineering. CBP agents have asked them about their access to US users’ TikTok data. The workers have also been asked about the location of TikTok’s US-based data centers and their own individual involvement with Project Texas, a massive corporate restructuring project designed to wall off US user data from ByteDance’s workers in China. 

After failing to stop a bill that could ban TikTok in the US unless it separates from its China-based owner ByteDance, the company now faces two big hurdles: the US judicial system and the Chinese government.

TikTok has promised to bring a legal challenge against the law that was signed by President Joe Biden on Wednesday, which requires ByteDance to divest the app within a year or face an effective ban in the US. Experts expect its main arguments to center on alleged violations of its own First Amendment rights and those of its 170 million US users. But it won’t be an easy fight since judges often hesitate to make decisions of national security importance where the legislature has so forcefully weighed in. 

This week’s TikTok news came with a strong feeling of déjà vu. Now, with the Biden administration giving up to a year for the app to be spun off from ByteDance or face a ban from the US, the question is: what happens next? 

ByteDance has been clear that it will fight this new law in the courts on First Amendment grounds, which is how it successfully defeated the Trump administration’s 2020 ban attempt. After talking to sources in and around the company, I think spinning off TikTok is the last-resort measure for leadership. CEO Shou Chew and other execs encouraged staff to stay the course during a humdrum all-hands meeting at TikTok’s New York City headquarters earlier this week, according to two people in attendance.