Supreme Court to Hear TikTok Case: What You Need to Know

The U.S. Supreme Court will respond to TikTok’s challenge to the law that if allowed to be affected it could lead to US ban on popular social media sites.

The country’s highest court said on Tuesday that it will hear oral arguments in the case on January 10, before the ban begins on January 19. The news comes after the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit earlier this month rejected TikTok’s request. overturning the law is a decision to issue its emergency order to suspend the law while the Supreme Court considers it.

In a filing with the Supreme Court, TikTok said that allowing the law — which would ban the app if it is not sold to a party that US officials believe should expire in January — to go into effect violates TikTok’s copyright. millions of US users.

TikTok said on Wednesday it was happy with the court’s decision to settle its case.

“We hope that the court will find TikTok’s ban unconstitutional so that the more than 170 million Americans on our platform can continue to exercise their freedom of expression,” the company said.

In its decisions at the beginning of this month, the appeals court rejected the same argumentadmitting that while the ban may require TikTok’s millions of users to “find other ways to communicate,” it is justified by the “unrelenting commercial threat” China poses to US national security.

“The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States,” Chief Circuit Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote in the ruling. “Here, the government acted to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary and to limit that adversary’s ability to collect information about the people of the United States.”

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Lawmakers from both parties have raised concerns that TikTok, which has more than 170 million American users, could pose a threat to national security and could be used by the Chinese government to spy on Americans or spread disinformation to advance its own agenda. China.

TikTok continues to deny these allegations. Ahead of a vote in Congress earlier this year, TikTok encouraged its US usersHe is asking them to encourage their representatives on Capitol Hill to vote. But the measure passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law by President Joe Biden.

It’s unclear how quickly the Supreme Court will rule, but the company will also get support from the Trump administration. President-elect Donald Trump, who pushed for a ban during his first term, now says he is not in favor of one.

Unless suspended by a court, the ban could go into effect as soon as Jan. 19, the day before Trump was inaugurated.

So what’s next for lawmakers and TikTok? Here’s what you need to know.

What does the law do?

The order aims to force ByteDance to sell TikTok to a buyer that the American authorities are comfortable with, and to ensure that ByteDance will no longer have access to the information of US users or to control the TikTok algorithm that selects the videos that American users see.

TikTok was given nine months to comply, hence the deadline of January 19, when the government would require its app to be removed from US stores. The President can extend it by 90 days.

Biden, who signed the bill that established the requirements, will remain in office until Inauguration Day on January 20.

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What’s next?

After calling for a ban during his first term in office, Trump now says he’s not biased and has promised to “save TikTok,” though he hasn’t said how he’s going to do it.

At a press conference on Monday, Trump pointed to the group’s use of TikTok during the election, saying it helped him win the youth vote.

“TikTok had an impact, so we’re looking,” Trump told reporters. “I have a little warm spot in my heart. I’ll be honest.”

Trumpet he said in March on CNBC’s Squawk Box that although he considered the app a threat to national security, he didn’t think it should be banned, saying, “There are a lot of little kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it.”

Trump added that banning TikTok would only increase the power of Facebook, which he called “the enemy of the people.”

In September, Trump promised “you know TikTok,” according to an Associated Press report interview that aired Sunday on Meet the PressTrump did not specifically say whether he would help TikTok avoid a ban.

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Who has opposed the TikTok ban?

Free speech and digital rights groups, as well as some security experts, have long opposed the ban, arguing that the ban on TikTok does nothing to solve the growing problems with social media as a whole. Many have already filed documents in the Supreme Court in support of TikTok.

Instead, he argues that lawmakers would be better off passing a digital privacy law that would protect Americans’ personal information by prohibiting all social media companies from collecting and selling that data to third parties.

Electronic Frontier Foundation Civil Liberties Director David Greene, co-author amicus brief filed in court on Tuesday, said the ban and the appeals court’s approval should be “worrying” even for those who don’t like TikTok.

“Shutting down channels of communication or forcing their renewal based on foreign propaganda and destabilizing the country is an anti-democratic strategy, which the US has opposed in the past around the world,” Greene said in an EFF statement.