TikTok is urging a federal appellate court in Washington DC to block the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which will effectively ban TikTok if its owner ByteDance doesn't divest the app to an American-owned company by April.
TikTok calls the statute “the most sweeping speech restriction in this country’s history” and claims that it “singles out and shutters a speech platform used by 170 million Americans.”
In its new filing last Thursday, TikTok's legal team claimed that the US is illegally singling out TikTok and that the government's fears are speculative and lack hard evidence.
TikTok attorney Alex Berengaut wrote in the filing, “The government cites no evidence of this supposed Chinese control—and its contention is flatly wrong.”
The Justice Department’s legal papers include large sections that have been redacted for containing classified information, and the DOJ has previously asked the court to keep key evidence under seal since it involves a “top secret” classified designation.
Lawyers for the DOJ said, “The government is not trying to litigate in secret, but rather to litigate in public to the greatest extent possible, while still providing the Court with access to the classified information that informed the government’s national-security judgments that are central to this litigation.”
The only thing the DOJ has publicly stated in Thursday’s filing is that “an entity founded and based in China and subject to Chinese laws controls TikTok’s recommendation algorithm.”
Whether it's right or wrong that TikTok should be banned, it infuriates me that the same politicians that want to ban TikTok are now using the app for their campaigns. Pick a lane.