Federal appeals court upholds ban on TikTok, forcing company to cut ties with China

December 6, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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NATIONWIDE — A FEDERAL APPEALS COURT PANEL ON FRIDAY upheld a law that could lead to a ban on the popular social media platform TikTok early next year, the Associated Press reports. The law, which President Joe Biden signed in April, requires TikTok to sever its ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance or be banned by mid-January. It was the culmination of a protracted debate in Washington over this video-sharing app, which the federal government has considered a national security threat because of its connections to China. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied TikTok’s petition to overturn the law and rebuffed the company’s challenge of the statute, which it had argued on the grounds of a First Amendment violation of Americans who wanted to use the U.S.-based subsidiary, Tiktok Inc. But lawyers for the United States emphasized the security threat to Americans, particularly the collection of user data, including sensitive information on viewing habits, that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion. The Court of Appeals panel, with two Republican-appointed and one Democratic-appointed judge, probed the attorneys for TikTok and ByteDance on whether the U.S. could curtail TikTok data in circumstances where the U.S. and China became adversaries in a war.

Although President-elect Donald Trump had in the past favored a ban, in March he reversed his stance.

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