David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – TikTok and its Chinese parent ByteDance said on Tuesday they had filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court to block or ban a law signed by President Joe Biden that would require the sale of the short-video app used by 170 million Americans. . use.
The companies said they filed the lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, arguing that the law violates the U.S. Constitution on a number of grounds, including the First Amendment’s protection of free speech. The law, signed by Biden on April 24, gives China’s ByteDance until January 19 to sell TikTok or face a ban.
TikTok provided Reuters with a copy of its lawsuit.
The lawsuit says the sale is “simply not possible from a commercial, technological or legal standpoint.”
no questions asked: The bill(s) would shut down TikTok by January 19, 2025, silencing the 170 million Americans who use the platform to communicate in ways that cannot be replicated elsewhere.”
Due to concerns among U.S. lawmakers that China could access data on Americans or spy on them using 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 companies from supporting TikTok unless ByteDance sells TikTok by Jan. 19.
The lawsuit also says the Chinese government has “made clear that it will not allow the sale of the recommendation system, which 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 the data of US users and made additional commitments in a 90-page draft National Security Agreement developed in negotiations with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). . “This agreement included TikTok’s agreement to a ‘termination option,’ which would have given the U.S. government the right to suspend TikTok’s operations in the United States if it violated certain obligations,” the lawsuit states.
In August 2022, according to the lawsuit, CFIUS ceased substantive discussions about the agreement, and in March 2023, CFIUS “insisted that ByteDance be required to sell TikTok’s U.S. business.” CFIUS is an interagency committee chaired by the U.S. Department of the Treasury that reviews foreign investments in U.S. businesses and real estate that affect national security interests.
Biden could extend the Jan. 19 deadline by three months if he decides ByteDance is making progress.
In 2020, a court blocked then-President Donald Trump from trying to ban TikTok and Chinese-owned WeChat, a unit of Tencent, in the United States. Trump, the Republican candidate challenging Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 U.S. election, has since reversed course, saying he does not support a ban but that security concerns need to be addressed.
Many experts question whether any potential buyer has the financial resources to buy TikTok and whether government agencies in China and the United States will approve the sale of TikTok.
According to the lawsuit, moving TikTok’s source code to the United States would “take years for an entirely new group of engineers to acquire sufficient knowledge.”
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The four-year battle over TikTok is an important front in the ongoing conflict over the Internet and technology between the United States and China. In April, Apple (NASDAQ:) said China ordered it to remove WhatsApp and Threads Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:) from its app store in China due to Chinese national security concerns.