Written by David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance said on Tuesday they had filed suit in a U.S. federal court seeking to block a law signed by President Joe Biden that would force the short-video app used by 170 million Americans to be withdrawn or banned. Uses.
The companies said they filed a lawsuit in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia arguing that the law violates the US Constitution for a number of reasons, including violating the First Amendment's free speech protections. The law, signed by Biden on April 24, gives Chinese company ByteDance until January 19 to sell TikTok or face a ban.
TikTok made a copy of the lawsuit available to Reuters.
Divestiture “is simply not possible: neither commercially, nor technically, nor legally…there,” the suit said
No doubt: The law would force TikTok to shut down by January 19, 2025, silencing the 170 million Americans who use the platform to communicate in ways that can't be replicated anywhere else.
Because of concerns among US lawmakers that China could access Americans' data or spy on them through the app, the measure passed overwhelmingly in Congress just weeks after it was introduced. The law prohibits app stores from offering TikTok and prohibits internet hosting services from supporting TikTok unless ByteDance withdraws TikTok by January 19.
The lawsuit also said the Chinese government “has made clear that it will not allow divestment in the recommendation engine that is key to TikTok's success in the United States.”
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It also said TikTok spent $2 billion to implement measures to protect US users' data and made additional commitments in a 90-page draft national security agreement developed through negotiations with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). That agreement included TikTok agreeing to a “shutdown option” that would give the US government the authority to suspend TikTok in the United States if it violated certain obligations,” according to the lawsuit.
In August 2022, according to the lawsuit, CFIUS stopped engaging in meaningful discussions about the agreement and in March 2023, CFIUS insisted that ByteDance would be required to divest its US TikTok business. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States is an interagency committee, chaired by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, that reviews foreign investments in U.S. companies and real estate that involve national security concerns.
Biden could extend the January 19 deadline by three months if he decides ByteDance is making progress.
In 2020, courts blocked then US President Donald Trump in his attempt to ban TikTok and Chinese-owned WeChat, a unit of Tencent, in the US. Trump, the Republican candidate challenging Democratic President Joe Biden in the US elections scheduled for November 5, has since reversed course, saying he does not support the ban but that security concerns must be addressed.
Many experts questioned whether any potential buyer would have the financial resources to purchase TikTok and whether Chinese and US government agencies would approve the sale.
Transferring TikTok's source code to the United States “would take years for a completely new group of engineers to gain sufficient knowledge,” the lawsuit said.
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The four-year-old battle over TikTok is an important front in the ongoing struggle over the internet and technology between the United States and China. In April, Apple (NASDAQ:) said China had ordered it to remove WhatsApp and Threads by Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:) from its app store in China due to Chinese national security concerns.