TikTok battles US ban threat in court

“IMPORTANT QUESTIONS”

The judges grilled the US government on whether TikTok USA, a US-based company, should be denied its free speech rights.

The US government lawyer, Daniel Tenny, insisted that the content being targeted was a recommendations algorithm based at ByteDance in China, not anything created by US users, and that it was therefore out of reach of free speech considerations. 

“There’s really no dispute here that the recommendation engine is maintained, developed, and written by ByteDance, rather than TikTok USA, and that is what’s being targeted,” Tenny argued.

The trio of judges will decide the case in the coming weeks or months, but regardless of their decision, the case is likely to reach the US Supreme Court, experts said.

“After listening to the oral arguments, I am more convinced that this case will end up in the Supreme Court,” said Sarah Kreps, director of Cornell’s Tech Policy Institute.

“Overall, the judges sounded more sceptical of the TikTok case but also raised important questions about the First Amendment, foreign influence and standards of scrutiny that I do not think were clearly resolved with today’s exchanges,” she added.

The fate of Americans’ access to TikTok has become a prominent issue in the country’s political debates, with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump opposing a ban. 

Democratic President Joe Biden, whose Vice President Kamala Harris is running against Trump, signed the law that gives TikTok until January to shed its Chinese ownership or be expelled from the US market. 

Harris uses TikTok in her campaign for November’s election and, despite signing the Bill that could kill the app, Biden also created an account.

According to a survey from Pew Research earlier this month, just 32 per cent of US adults back a TikTok ban.