The US Supreme Court agreed to take up TikTok's appeal challenging a federal law that would ban the app next month, giving the social media app one last chance in court to fight the ban or divest law.
The court agreed to take on the case just a day after TikTok filed its appeal and will hear oral arguments on Jan 10th before issuing a decision on whether the law holds. It is unknown how quickly the court will come to a decision, however, I'd imagine it'll be soon after the hearing (and before Jan 19th) given how big of a case this is and how fast they've moved on it already.
BACKSTORY: Two weeks ago I reported (story #1) that three-judge panel in Washington, D.C. unanimously upheld the new US law called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, ruling that it did not violate free speech protections under the First Amendment. The bill, which passed with overwhelming support in Congress and was signed by President Biden in April, mandates that the app be banned if ByteDance doesn’t sell the platform to an American company, citing that TikTok had become a national security issue. The decision left the Supreme Court as TikTok's last hope for stopping the law from taking effect.
On Dec 9th, ByteDance and TikTok filed an emergency motion with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, requesting a temporary halt to the law's enforcement pending Supreme Court review. Although the Supreme Court agreed to take on the case, they did not grant the emergency motion to halt the law's enforcement. (Yet, as that could change.)
Ban Advocates: “TikTok is a security threat. The app could be forced to give sensitive user data to the Chinese government!”
Ban Opponents: “The new law violates free speech rights! Also, where's your proof that TikTok has done anything of that nature?”
Trump (per Reuters): “I think we're going to have to start thinking because, you know, we did go on TikTok, and we had a great response with billions of views, billions and billions of views. They brought me a chart, and it was a record, and it was so beautiful to see, and as I looked at it, I said, ‘Maybe we gotta keep this sucker around for a little while'.”
Me: “If a mobile app has the ability to provide sensitive user data to the Chinese government that could ultimately pose a national security threat — take it up with Google and Apple! No app should even have the ability to pose that type of risk. Fix the pipe, not the leak.”
In other TikTok news this week…
- ShopSee filed a patent infringement suit accusing TikTok of copying its protected system that helps sellers and advertisers sell products in video content. The company says that TikTok's system that instructs sellers to create videos containing links for products and services infringes on ShopSee's US Patent No. 11,134,316. Good luck with that one, ShopSee! That probably never should have been patentable.
- TikTok is getting more requests for content removal from different governments around the world, according to the company's transparency reports for 2024. Malaysia led the pack with the most removal requests during the first half of the year, followed by Indonesia and Australia. Digital Information World notes that no reports came from China, which could either mean that they requested no content removal or that the removal requests were not part of the report.