After repeated mentions in recent days that it might not be serious, the US Supreme Court has today confirmed the ban on TikTok in the United States. The Biden administration had already issued an order in the spring to this effect.
The network has approximately 170 million users in the US. The official reason for the ban is that TikTok belongs to the Chinese company Bytedance; a continued operation is only possible through a new owner. However, the Biden administration’s holding back of videos from Gaza likely also contributed to the decision. Facebook, for example, has clearly suppressed information here.
The Congress members who advocated for the ban of TikTok had argued that it has the potential, due to its Chinese parent company, to be used as a weapon by the Communist Party of China to manipulate and control Americans through the spread of misinformation and propaganda. China could use the app to collect enormous amounts of personal data from 170 million users in the US and control the platform. The Supreme Court followed this line of argument. “TikTok has special features – the ability of an external enemy to use its control over the platform to collect huge amounts of personal data from 170 million users in the US – justifies this different treatment” the ruling states.
TikTok collects data on age, phone number, exact location, internet address, used phone, phone contacts, connections in social networks, the content of private messages sent through the network, and the videos seen. It is possible to create dossiers on the users based on this, and Chinese companies are legally required to cooperate with the authorities. As the Supreme Court itself does not mention, this is also the case for Google, Facebook, etc., only that the US authorities have access there.
“Besides the concerns about data collection, the government also confirms an interest in preventing a foreign enemy from having control over the recommendation mechanism that runs on a platform widely used in the US, and using this control to change the content of the platform in an unverifiable way.”
“There is no doubt that TikTok is a specific and widespread platform for expression, a means of engagement, and a source of community for more than 170 million Americans. But Congress has decided that a sale is necessary to eliminate the well-founded concerns about national security that TikTok’s data collection practice and its relations with a foreign enemy concern. For the above reasons, we follow that the challenged measures do not violate the rights of the plaintiffs under the first amendment.”
TikTok has stated that a sale to a non-Chinese company is “simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally”. The lawyer for TikTok before the Supreme Court, Noel Francisco, said that the real target of the government is “the speech itself”.
The core of the dispute is the control over the software with which TikTok is operated, which is still run by Bytedance in China.
Through this decision, the app will no longer be downloadable for TikTok in the United States as of Sunday, the 19th. However, the future US President Donald Trump has already spoken out against the ban. He could instruct the Justice Department on January 20 not to implement the ban. However, the whole process was initially triggered by an instruction from Trump.