ByteDance said the US government would rather shut down than work on an “effective solution” to protect US users.
TikTok and Chinese parent ByteDance have urged a US court to strike down a law they say will ban the popular short video app in the US on January 19 next year.
In details released Thursday, the two companies said the US government has refused to engage in serious talks to reach a deal as early as 2022.
Legislation signed in April by President Joe Biden gives ByteDance until January next year to divest TikTok's US assets or face a ban on the app used by 170 million Americans. ByteDance says a divestment is “not technologically, commercially or legally possible.”
ByteDance recounted lengthy negotiations between the company and the US government that it said ended abruptly in August 2022. The company also released a redacted version of a more than 100-page draft national security agreement to protect data on U.S. TikTok users and says it has spent more than $2 billion on the effort.
The draft agreement included giving the US government a “kill switch” to suspend TikTok there at its sole discretion if the company did not comply with the agreement and the draft says the US demanded that the source code of TikTok was moved out of China.
“This administration has determined that it would rather try to shut down TikTok in the United States and eliminate a platform of expression for 170 million Americans, rather than continue working on a practical, feasible and effective solution to protect American users through enforceable law. . agreement with the US government,” TikTok lawyers wrote to the Justice Department in an April 1 email made public Thursday.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the email, but said last month that the law “addresses critical national security concerns in a manner consistent with the First Amendment and other constitutional limitations.” He said he would defend the legislation in court.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hold oral arguments on lawsuits brought by TikTok and ByteDance along with TikTok users on September 16. TikTok's future in the US may depend on the outcome of the case, which could affect how the US government uses its new authority to clamp down on foreign-owned apps.
“This law is a radical departure from this country's tradition of defending an open Internet and sets a dangerous precedent that allows political branches to attack a disadvantaged expression platform and force it to sell it or shut it down,” ByteDance and TikTok argued when asking the court to annul the law.
Prompted by concerns among U.S. lawmakers that China could access or spy on Americans' data with the app, the measure passed Congress overwhelmingly just weeks after it was introduced.
Freedom of expression rights
Lawyers for a group of TikTok users who sued to prevent the app from being banned said the law would violate their free speech rights. In a filing Thursday, they argued that it's clear there are no imminent risks to national security because the law “allows TikTok to continue operating for the rest of this year, even during an election that the same president who signed the bill says which is existential for our democracy.”
TikTok says any divestment or separation, even if technically possible, would take years, and argues that the law runs counter to Americans' free speech rights.
Additionally, it says the law unfairly singles out TikTok for punitive treatment and “ignores many apps with substantial operations in China that collect large amounts of data from American users, as well as the many American companies that develop software and employ engineers in China.” .
In 2020, courts blocked then-President Donald Trump from attempting to ban Chinese-owned TikTok and WeChat, a unit of Tencent, in the United States.
The White House says it wants an end to Chinese ownership for national security reasons, but not a ban on TikTok. Earlier this month, Trump joined TikTok and recently expressed concerns about a possible ban.
The law prohibits app stores like those of Apple and Alphabet's Google from offering TikTok. It also prohibits internet hosting services from supporting TikTok unless ByteDance sells it.
