Court Hears Challenge to US TikTok Law

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Facts

  • TikTok on Monday argued its case to the three-judge panel that makes up the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit in an attempt to overturn a law that would force the app's parent company, ByteDance, to sell to a non-Chinese entity or be banned in the US on Jan. 19.[1]
  • Pres. Joe Biden signed the law in April, as a bipartisan swath of lawmakers passed it over national security concerns related to Americans' data and potential sway over TikTok by the Chinese government.[1]
  • A lawyer for TikTok and ByteDance, which sued to challenge the law in May, argued that the law 'imposes extraordinary speech prohibition' on the app's users and could lead to future censorship.[2]
  • In addition, a lawyer for a group of content creators argued that the law restricts Americans from choosing the editor and publisher of their choice.[2][3]
  • Meanwhile, a Justice Department lawyer called the First Amendment impact from the law 'incidental,' since the main goal of it is to limit foreign influence over TikTok's algorithm.[4]
  • The judges on the appeal weighed all sides of the issue during their questioning — posing hypotheticals and considering recent Supreme Court rulings. One element they seemed to agree on was concern related to applying the First Amendment to a foreign-based company used and viewed by hundreds of millions of Americans.[4]

Sources: [1]NPR Online News, [2]BBC News, [3]Axios and [4]CNN.

Narratives

  • Establishment-critical narrative, as provided by Guardian. This is a bad law in search of a problem to regulate. TikTok doesn't coordinate anything with the Chinese government. If the courts don't stop this law, the US government will be disrupting an uncountable number of marketing and retail businesses — in addition to violating millions of citizens' rights to free speech — just to look tough on China, which is doing nothing wrong.
  • Pro-establishment narrative, as provided by NBC. This law must stand. Even if the Chinese government hasn't exerted control over ByteDance or TikTok, the fact is these companies aren't beholden to any shareholders but are to the Communist Party of China — and that's why there's risk to American users. Two recent studies show how the app is biased toward China's point of view and is integrated in China's propaganda apparatus.

Predictions