USA: TikTok Appeals Forced Sale
Under the recently enacted Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, ByteDance must sell the social network or shut down by January 2025
On May 7, 2024, TikTok filed suit against the USA. The target is the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, recently signed into law by President Joe Biden, which forces Chinese company ByteDance, owner of the widespread social network particularly popular among teens and youngsters, to sell it to a US company or shut it down by January 29, 2025.
The law that TikTok considers unjust, invoking the First Amendment to the Constitution, would recognize the forced sale as unconstitutional.
There are concerns in the USA that TikTok poses a national security threat, given the large amount of data it collects that could potentially end up in the hands of the Chinese government (which ByteDance denies, explaining that no evidence of such operations has been provided). TikTok is also under a magnifying glass in Europe, where there are fears of breaches of personal data, the Digital Services Act, the law concerning transparency of digital services and their security.
It’s hard to say what will happen: as early as 2020, the USA, along with President Donald Trump, attempted a lawsuit against TikTok, but judges ruled in favor of the social network. When Biden signed the law, TikTok CEO Shu Tzu Chu said: “Rest assured, we’re not going anywhere.”
