A federal appeals court panel on Friday upheld a law that could lead to a ban on TikTok in a few short months, handing a resounding defeat to the popular social media platform as it fights for its survival in the US. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the law, which requires TikTok to break ties with its China-based parent company, ByteDance, or be banned by mid-January, is constitutional, rebuffing TikTok's challenge that the statute ran afoul of the First Amendment and unfairly targeted the platform, per the AP. "The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States," said the court's opinion. "Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary's ability to gather data on people in the United States."
TikTok and ByteDance—another plaintiff in the lawsuit—are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, President-elect Trump, who tried to ban TikTok during his first term and whose Justice Department would have to enforce the law, said during the campaign that he's now against a TikTok ban and would work to "save" the social media platform. The law, signed by President Biden in April, culminated a yearslong saga in Washington over the short-form video-sharing app, which the government sees as a national security threat due to its connections to China. The US has said it's concerned about TikTok collecting vast swaths of user data that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government.
Officials have also warned that the proprietary algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that's difficult to detect. TikTok, which sued the government over the law in May, has long denied it could be used by Beijing to spy on or manipulate Americans. Its attorneys have accurately pointed out that the US hasn't provided evidence to show that the company handed over user data to the Chinese government, or that it manipulated content for Beijing's benefit in the US. If TikTok appeals and the courts continue to uphold the law, it would fall on Trump's DOJ to enforce it and punish any potential violations with fines. More here.
(More
TikTok stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
