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Tiktok, in its efforts to halt a law that requires it to divest from its Chinese ownership or face a ban in the United States, faced push back in a federal court.
TikTok faced pushback in a federal court on Monday in its efforts to stop a law that requires the app to divest from its Chinese ownership or face a ban in the United States.
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals in Washington heard arguments from TikTok, its owner ByteDance, and a group of users claiming that the ban violates free speech and is unconstitutional.
The US government alleges TikTok allows Beijing to collect data and spy on users. It also says TikTok is a conduit to spread propaganda. China and the company strongly deny these claims.
TikTok has until January to find a buyer or face the ban, which would likely provoke a strong response from the Chinese government and further strain US-China relations.
It would also upend the social media business and rile many of the app's 170 million US users.
ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, has stated it has no plans to sell TikTok, leaving the app's legal appeal -- focused on US guarantees for free speech -- as its only option for survival.
TikTok's lawyer countered: "Mere foreign ownership can't possibly be a justification, because it would turn the First Amendment (protecting free speech) on its head."
He added that seeing foreign ownership alone as criteria for forced divestiture "would be a pretty shocking change here," citing other foreign-owned media companies such as Politico, Al Jazeera, and the BBC.
The lawyer also questioned why the US law did not target e-commerce sites with similar Chinese ownership.
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.
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.
Lewis Musonye
