Popular app faces shutdown without a sale as creators, businesses sound alarm
The sentiment among US media is that the Supreme Court is inclined to uphold the ban on TikTok, which would leave many of its 170 million US users frustrated.
A ban on the immensely popular social media app would go into effect on Sunday unless it is sold by its owner, Beijing-based ByteDance, but such a sale is considered highly unlikely.
The nine justices, who heard arguments on Friday in a case of free speech versus national security concerns, seemed persuaded that the alleged security threat posed by the company overrides concerns about restricting the speech of TikTok and its users in the United States.
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In arguments that lasted more than two and a half hours, Chief Justice John Roberts identified his main concern: TikTok's ownership by ByteDance and what he said was its requirement to cooperate with the Chinese government's intelligence operations.
TikTok has repeatedly said it does not share information with the Chinese government.
If left in place, the law overwhelmingly passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in April will require TikTok to "go dark" on Sunday, the lawyer representing TikTok and its users told the justices.
Noel Francisco urged the justices to enter a temporary pause that would allow TikTok to keep operating. "We might be in a different world again," he said, once President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Monday.
Trump, who has 14.7 million followers on TikTok, has also called for the deadline to be delayed to give him time to negotiate a "political resolution". Francisco served as Trump's solicitor general in his first presidential term.
However, only Justice Neil Gorsuch, whom Trump appointed, sounded like he would side with TikTok's argument that the ban violates the Constitution.
Gorsuch labeled arguments advanced by the Biden administration in defense of the law a "paternalistic point of view".
"Don't we normally assume that the best remedy for problematic speech is counter-speech?" he asked Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who defended the law for the Biden administration.
A warning would not be enough to counterbalance the spread of misinformation, Prelogar argued.
ByteDance has said it will not sell TikTok, despite several expressions of interest from potential US buyers.
Francisco said the US has not presented evidence that China has attempted to manipulate content or gather US users' data, which TikTok maintains are stored on US servers.
"This country has never taken a step of shutting down a speech platform, much less such an important speech platform," he said.
Jenin Younes, a civil liberties lawyer in Washington, wrote on X to her 136,000 followers: "The case raises an incredibly important question: can Congress ban a social media platform on the grounds that it constitutes a national security risk? The answer should be NO … especially where, as here, the government has failed to show the law is narrowly tailored to meet a compelling government interest."
TikTok users who already have the app on their phones will continue to have access to it. However, new users will not be able to download it, and existing users will no longer be able to receive updates. That will eventually render the app unworkable, the Justice Department has said.
"The letter of the law is about future downloads and updates," said Dean Ball, a research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia, to The New York Times. "It's not about taking the app off people's phones."
TikTok, however, has not said if it will allow access to the app if it is banned, the Times reported.
If TikTok is not sold to an approved buyer, federal law would prohibit app stores from offering it. The law would also prohibit web-hosting service providers from carrying TikTok.
Voicing dismay
Many US users of the app expressed dismay over the looming ban.
"TikTok has contributed over $32 billion to the US economy in 2023,""InvestmentKage" posted on X on Sunday.
"It helps support millions of creators, some of these people couldn't get a job because of disabilities and the government wants to ban it. Again, the government doesn't always have your best interest in mind."
Skip Chapman, co-owner of KAFX Body in Manasquan, New Jersey, a deodorant maker, said, "There's really no replacement for this app."
Chapman said more than 80 percent of his sales are generated on TikTok, and he has not found the same results on Amazon or other platforms.
Chloe Joy Sexton, a cookbook author in Memphis, Tennessee, said TikTok has changed her life. She started using the app when she was fired from her job because she was pregnant, she said. Sexton then started her own business, Chloe's Giant Cookies.
"I have now shipped thousands of cookies all over the world and even published a cookbook as a small business without a lot of capital," she said. "I rely almost entirely on TikTok to market my products."
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Prelogar, the US solicitor general, said an eventual sale of the platform, even after the ban starts, would allow TikTok to resume operations.
TikTok negotiated with the Biden administration between 2021 and 2022 to resolve concerns around US data privacy and the app's algorithm.
In court documents, it has accused the administration of essentially walking away from those talks after it presented a draft agreement in August 2022.
A three-judge federal panel unanimously upheld the law last month, prompting TikTok's appeal to the Supreme Court.
Agencies contributed to this story.
