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regular-article-logo Sunday, 22 December 2024

TikTok one step closer to US ban after court upholds law, deadline set for mid-January

The three judges, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, denied TikTok’s petition to overturn the law

New York Times News Service New York Published 07.12.24, 08:07 AM
Representational image

Representational image File image

TikTok is one step closer to disappearing in the US after a panel of federal judges on Friday upheld a new law that could lead to the banning of the popular Chinese-owned video app by mid-January.

The three judges, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, denied TikTok’s petition to overturn the law. The decision could be a death blow for the app in one of its biggest markets. More than 170 million Americans use TikTok to entertain and inform themselves, turning it into a cultural phenomenon. The looming loss of the app in the US had spurred concern from free speech advocates.

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The decision also raises new questions for President-elect Donald Trump, who has repeatedly signalled his support for the app, but who doesn’t have a clear path for rescuing it under the new law.

The law, signed in April, requires TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the app to a non-Chinese company by January 19 or face a ban in the US. TikTok, which has been in the cross hairs of politicians since 2020 because of its ties to China, has said a sale is impossible, in part because it would be blocked by the Chinese government. The company argued that the law unfairly singled out TikTok and that a ban would infringe on the First Amendment rights of American users.

The judges disagreed with TikTok’s argument. They said the law was “carefully crafted to deal with only control by a foreign adversary”, and didn’t run afoul of the First Amendment.

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