Jose Gonzalez-Campelo/The Cougar
In June, Tiktok and a group of creators filed a lawsuit against the United States, for a law requiring the China based company to sell the app or face a nationwide ban.
In the brief, Tiktok’s lawyers argue that the law signed by President Joe Biden, specifically singles out TikTok and is “unconstitutional” for limiting the freedom of speech for millions of Americans.
“The Act is unconstitutional because of its unique, two-tiered system of speech regulation, which singles out TikTok for disfavor,” said the brief. “That flaw is sufficient to invalidate the Act irrespective of any purported national security justification.”
The bill was tucked in with a $95 billion foreign aid package to Ukraine and Israel and was passed in the Senate 79-18.
The U.S. House of Representatives made the decision to add-in the TikTok bill into the foreign aid package after an earlier version of the bill failed to make it out of the Senate.
The new bill gives TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, until Jan. 19 next year to sell its U.S. based operations or face a nationwide ban.
Officials in Congress have cited concerns about the app’s influence and national security risks. They want the app to be sold to another entity altogether.
However, the officials have not disclosed what kind of threat the app poses and how serious the threat is, said assistant professor of journalism and media studies Nandikoor Prashanth Bhat.
“We also don’t have any evidence, at least in public domain, which shows that Tiktok shares American user data with the Chinese government,” Bhat said. “So, a lot of these details are very opaque, we don’t have credible evidence yet.’
This is the basis on which TikTok is making the argument on how all of this is a violation of free speech, according to Bhat.
While social media apps like TikTok, can have negative impacts on society for a lot of reasons, banning the app right now, when young people are using it to criticize Israel for the war on Palestine, is apprehensive, said architecture senior Ethan Work.
“I agree in principle with banning TikTok because it is a net negative on society for reasons too numerous to name,” Work said. “However it’s suspicious that it’s only happening now because of the rampant criticism of the state of Israel that has overtaken the platform and the fact that the U.S. government has a vested interest in funding Israel.”
Although there is no question that TikTok is under a lot of pressure about their views on foreign policy, a lot of the debate on banning the app took place before the current crises in the Middle East.
“My impression was that the TikTok discussion was primarily about national security and that’s why they went to sort of start the process to ban it which happened largely before a lot of the kind of current crisis in the Middle East,” said political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus. “So, my sense is that they’re not connected but they very well could be.”
In 2020, former President Donald Trump attempted to ban the app through an executive order. However, courts blocked the move after TikTok sued.
While concerns about TikTok continue to grow in the federal government, the app is used by more than 170 million people in the U.S. About one-third of young people get their news regularly from TikTok, according to Pew Research Center.
“Functionally banning TikTok will eliminate a primary source of media and news for a lot of people,” Rottinghaus said. “ So there’s definitely gonna be an impact.”
A U.S. Appeals court will hear oral arguments on the case on Sept. 16.
The Justice Department had to file briefs by July 26, with reply briefs due by Aug. 15. TikTok and the Justice Department are seeking a decision by Dec. 6 in order to seek the U.S. Supreme Court’s review, if needed.
