The upper house didn’t have much of a choice: banning TikTok was on the agenda together with aid to Ukraine and Israel, so it couldn’t deal with the issue separately. President Joe Biden has already announced that he will sign the law after it is passed by Congress.
After its launch, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, may be forced to part with the next-generation social media app. If you do not sell the interface, the application will be banned, reminded ABC News.
The other possible and more likely outcome is that the company challenges the decision through legal channels.
The law “violates the free speech rights of 170 million Americans, threatens 7 million businesses, and eliminates a platform that contributes $24 billion annually to the U.S. economy,” the platform previously argued.
ByteDance is given nine months by law to sell.
The sales deadline can be extended once by three months, which means that the parent company should find a new buyer in practically one year. In this case, TikTok itself will remain continuously available to US users.
The situation is complicated by the fact that the possible sale must be approved by the Chinese government. In recent years, Beijing has regulated the export of domestically developed algorithms, on the basis of which the sale of TikTok can also be banned, CNN wrote.
I’m Singaporean – this is how Chu Sú, CEO of TikTok, used to defend his company.
Freedom of speech or national security
However, there is a much greater chance that the right holder will challenge the measure by referring to the first constitutional amendment, which states freedom of speech, which – according to experts – could even invalidate the law completely.
The US authorities can defend their decision in one way: they can claim that national security concerns override the right to free speech
said Anupam Chander, law professor at Georgetown University.
There has already been an example of such a procedure: in May of last year, TikTok sued Montana, citing the first constitutional amendment, from which the application was banned.
In November, a federal judge ruled in favor of the plaintiff, invalidating the restriction before it took effect.
In Montana, they tried to ban the app citing privacy rights and children’s safety, but this cannot be compared to the argument of the US government, which explains its reservations with national security concerns, said Sarah Kreps, director of the Cornell University Policy Institute.
If legal proceedings are initiated, a federal judge may temporarily suspend the application of the law until the proceedings are concluded.
The ban
The ban would mean that TikTok would have to be removed from American app stores, including those serving iPhones and Android mobile devices, the App Store, and Google Play. New users would no longer be able to download the app, and current users would not be able to access vital updates, which would render it inoperable after a certain period of time.
Even worse, the American example would probably be followed by Canada, and perhaps even the United Kingdom.
Some IT-savvy users may be able to work around the ban, but it’s too complicated or inconvenient for the majority.
However, this development may be the music of the distant future, because Michael Beckerman, the American head of TikTok, also hinted earlier that their rights will be asserted in court.
By the way, TikTok was banned in India four years ago after the India-China border clashes. Most of the 200 million users have moved to other social platforms.
(Cover photo: Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images)
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