As of: January 17, 2025 5:33 p.m
In the dispute over the Chinese app TikTok, the US Supreme Court has approved a law that would ban TikTok or force it to sell. This means that the app is threatened with extinction on Sunday. However, the government in Washington is signaling a postponement.
The US Supreme Court has upheld a law that could result in a ban on the video app TikTok in the United States. The judges unanimously ruled that the national security risks posed by the platform’s ties to China outweigh concerns about protecting free speech.
With the decision, TikTok would theoretically have to disappear from the American app stores of Apple and Google when the sales deadline expired on Sunday and lose access to the infrastructure.
However, the current government and future President Donald Trump have already signaled that TikTok should get a reprieve instead of having to shut it down in the USA on Sunday. According to its own information, the app has more than 170 million users in the USA.
Government is considering options
“Americans should not prepare for TikTok to suddenly be banned on Sunday,” an anonymous government official told NBC. Options for the appropriate implementation of the law are being examined. On ABC, the White House was even clearer: The deadline expires on a weekend the day before the new president’s inauguration – “and it will fall to the next administration to enforce it.”
-Biden can legally extend the deadline for TikTok by three months. However, the prerequisite for this is that there are promising sales negotiations – TikTok and ByteDance have so far refused to even talk about a separation. But the White House is signaling that TikTok headlines should not overshadow Biden’s final days in office.
Trump wants more time for a deal
Trump’s camp is also already exploring the legal scope. “We will take measures to ensure that TikTok does not go out of business,” Trump’s future national security adviser Mike Waltz told Fox News. This should give Trump more time to negotiate a deal. He also raised the topic of TikTok during a conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Another sign of how highly the platform is now in Trump’s favor: According to media reports, TikTok boss Shou Chew, like the heads of major American tech companies, will be sitting in the stands at Trump’s inauguration on Monday.
Safety concerns in the USA
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, which has its headquarters in China. There are warnings in the US that the Chinese government could gain access to data from US users and organize influence campaigns on the platform. Therefore, ByteDance must separate from TikTok under a US law on foreign control of online platforms. TikTok denies the allegations. At the same time, it is said that a separation from ByteDance would be technically difficult or even impossible.
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