The U.S. government has ruled out a national speech-protecting ban on shortform video apps from the platform ByteDance
TikTok is suing the US government over the new law that would force the shortform video app to be divested from its China-based parent company ByteDance or face a ban in the US. In a court filing submitted Tuesday, TikTok says Congress has “taken the unprecedented step of expressly singling out and banning TikTok” and calls the move “unconstitutional.”
“For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban, and bars every American from participating in a unique online community with more than 1 billion people worldwide,” the lawsuit reads.
The law is based on flawed concerns about data security and content manipulation, and could be addressed with less restrictive and tailored means, according to the filing.
Constitutional scholars say there are few ways for the government to restrict speech in a way that would survive a legal challenge. One way to demonstrate a national security risk is by the government. Legal experts agree that the speech suppression was the least restrictive option on the table.
How Beijing is using ByteDance, not TikTok: A U.S. ban in court accusing it unconstitutional
ByteDance, not TikTok, developed and controls the algorithm that determines what millions see on the app every day. The technology has become the envy of Silicon Valley and no US company has been able to challenge TikTok’s hold on the short-form video market. Experts say key to its success is its highly engaging and hyper-personalized video-ranking algorithm.
Beijing could affect the views of Americans with how videos are marked on the platform, according to concerns in Washington. Seven months before a presidential election, that concern has become heightened.
There has been no publicly available instance of the Chinese government attempting to use TikTok as a data collection tool. There is no proof that the Chinese government has ever had a hand in what Americans see on TikTok.
TikTok says that it invested $2 billion in a plan to separate its US operation from its Chinese parent company. It deleted all of Americans’ data from foreign servers and relocated all of the data to servers on U.S. soil overseen by the Austin-based tech company Oracle.
The plan was intended to build trust but it was found that data was moving between the staff in California and Beijing.
Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told NPR on Monday, he is planning to assemble a group of investors to try to purchase TikTok without the app’s algorithm.
Mnuchin, who declined to answer additional questions, said in between sessions at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles that the proposal to buy the app is still in the works, but he would not say when it would be formally submitted.
The ByteDance Algorithm’s Challenge: A U.S. No-Go Theorem in the Early 2000s
Despite the new law in the U.S., ByteDance says it does not intend to let go of the service. Furthermore, winning the support of China would be necessary, and officials in Beijing are adamantly against any forced sale.
If China allowed the transfer of the algorithm, it would be impossible to do so in the US, according to TikTok’s challenge.
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