CEO Shou Zi Chew at the newly elected president’s residence in Mar-a-Lago. On the same day the company appealed to the Supreme Court against the law that bans the social network in the country unless it is sold to an American company by January 19
All the most important exponents of Big Tech are taking part in the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago. If the friend – and close collaborator – Elon Musk is now at home in Donald Trump’s Florida residence, they then gradually introduced themselves to the court of the newly elected American president Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos e Tim Cook. The last, in order of time, is perhaps the manager who most urgently needs to talk to the next occupant of the White House. He also showed up at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, December 17th Shou Zi Chewthe CEO of TikTok.
There is no precise information regarding what Trump and Zi Chew talked about, but certainly at the heart of their discussion was the law signed last April by Joe Biden which imposes the blocking of TikTok across the country unless the platform is sold to an American company. Times are tight: the ban – whose original idea was actually Trump’s own – will come into force next January 19thor one day before the inauguration of the new president of the United States. Who left some statements in a press conference after seeing Zi Chew. “I’ll take a look at TikTok,” he said. Platform to which I admit I have now reserved «a warm place in my heart, because I won among the youth by 34 points. There are people who say TikTok has something to do with it.” For its part, meanwhile, TikTok is using all the legal weapons at its disposal. He presented first appeal to the Court of Appeal (appeal rejected) and presented on the same day as the CEO’s visit to Mar-a-Lago appeal to the Supreme Court. And it’s the last chance, unless Trump intervenes.
As in the previous appeal, TikTok reaches the Supreme Court arguing that the law violates the First Amendment of the American Constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression. ” Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was engineered and supported based on inaccurate, misleading and speculative informationconfiguring itself as a real form of censorship towards the American people. If not stopped, this ban risks stifling the voices of over 170 million of citizens in the United States and around the world starting January 19, 2025,” a company spokesperson said immediately after the appeals court’s decision to reject the first appeal.
The law banning TikTok in the United States was in fact desired by Congress and by Joe Biden for the sake of force national security concernsdue to the bonds that ByteDance – TikTok’s Chinese parent company – could have with the Chinese authorities. The fear is that user data and information collected could be shared with the Beijing government. Something that ByteDance has always denied happens and could ever happen. Now Trump is covertly opening up the possibility of repealing the law signed by his predecessor, although in reality he was the first to try to block TikTok. In 2020 he asked the Chinese giant to find an American partner to whom he could sell the US part of the business. The idea then stalled and was carried out in the next administration. But TikTok has become in the meantime a fundamental communication arena for politics and Biden himself joined the election campaign. Not to mention Trump’s success: 14.7 million followers and videos that collect tens of millions of views. A propaganda tool that might now be difficult to do without.
December 17, 2024 (changed December 17, 2024 | 4:42 pm)
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