On Monday to prevent the implementation of a US law that would ban the popular short video app TikTok on January 19. Tik Tok and the Chinese parent company’s attorney attempted to persuade a federal appeals court. 170 million Americans use this app. They claim that it breaches the right to free speech, but they were questioned by the judges harshly.
US President Joe Biden approved a new law in April that granted TikTok until January of the coming year to separate the US operations from the parent company, ByteDance. The parent company’s connections to China are seen as a threat to national security by the US government.
TikTok is suing to overturn the decision to ban TikTok in the US as of right now, protesting that it violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech in the US constitution.
The two parties are now scheduled to appear in a federal court in a lawsuit that might have major consequences for social media in the US and beyond.
For two hours, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was presented with arguments in the lawsuit that TikTok and ByteDance filed in May, asking for an injunction to stop the law from going into force.
Declaring that China can secretly manipulate information that Americans consume via the well-known app, Justice Department lawyer Daniel Tenny pressed the US government’s position that TikTok, which is owned by China, presents a threat to national security due to its access to enormous amounts of personal data on Americans.
Judges Douglas Ginsburg, Neomi Rao, and Sri Srinivasan were informed by Andrew Pincus, the attorney representing TikTok and ByteDance, that the U.S. government has not provided evidence that TikTok genuinely presents a threat to national security.
