A United States Appeal Court ruled to uphold the law that restricts the use of TikTok, and rejected TikTok’s claim of law being unconstitutional in terms of violation of right to free speech. The judges however decided that the law is not against the protection of free speech or its guarantee of equal treatment under the law as enshrined under US Constitution.

Due to the recent decision of US Appeal Court, this may lead to potential Tiktok ban in United States, because after the deadline of January 19, 2025, US app stores and internet services would be fined for hosting TikTok

Background

April, 2024: President Biden signed a bill which requires TikTok to be sold to a non-Chinese company or be banned in the United States. The decision was an outcome of lawmakers’ concerns that ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, could be a threat to national security, as it might share user data with the Chinese government for surveillance purposes or that the Chinese government could manipulate TikTok’s algorithm to spread misinformation.

May, 2024: TikTok took legal course against the law with argument that the law unfairly targeted TikTok and limits the free speech rights of its over 170 million of its American users. Thereafter, the court combined this lawsuit with other similar complaints of individual TikTok creators.

September, 2024: US government’s Attorney argued that ByteDance can control the platform’s algorithm and could potentially be used to sway the opinions of American users