A bill that would ban TikTok in the US – unless its Chinese owner sells a majority of it – has passed the Senate and signed the law President Biden on Wednesday.
Shortly after Biden signed the bill, TikTok CEO Shu Zi Chu posted video urging viewers to “rest assured, we’re not going anywhere,” adding that he was confident TikTok would win the trial. ByteDance said on Thursday on its Chinese social network Toutiao that “has no plans to sell TikTok”
The new law came after many years attempts to ban extremely popular short video platform, including former President Trump, for reasons of national security. But a digital law expert said the US has did not provide any evidence to support its demands, and believes the ban is unconstitutional.
Why is the ban unconstitutional?
The legislation requires TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell the majority of the company within nine months, with an additional three months possible if a sale is in the works. Otherwise the application will be blocked. But legal problems are looming the time frame can take years.
Besides being a major irritant to 170 million American users, TikTok’s ban could be considered unconstitutional and a violation of the freedom of speech of both users and the platform owner, according to Anupam Chander, a TikTok analyst. Professor of Global Regulation of New Technologies at Georgetown University.
That’s because “the clear assault on free speech was not justified on grounds of national security,” he told Fortune magazine. Although the US has said that China will use the app keep an eye on the Americans and accused TikTok of growing propagandaThe government has not provided any public evidence of this, he said.
In court, much of the debate will likely focus on whether the ban would infringe on Americans’ and TikTok’s First Amendment rights to content, Chander said. He explained that TikTok is a Chinese company registered in the US and has the same rights as a US resident, “and of course has constitutional rights.”
TikTok will likely argue that its right to communicate with the public is undermined by this law, as if the US government had ordered a new owner The newspaper “New York Times, he added. He could also argue that the law constitutes “viewpoint discrimination” targeting their particular views, which Chander said is especially problematic under the First Amendment and has been frowned upon by the courts.
Other Data Privacy Solutions
Alternative mechanisms, such as creating a national standard for data privacy laws that applies to all companies operating in the U.S., could better protect Americans, he suggested.
While it is impossible to be completely free from the risks of foreign surveillance online, Chander said a national standard of privacy rules will help minimize the risk of abuse that exists online. several American companies, more broadly. However, it will be difficult to develop and pass such a law.
“From a political perspective, it’s much easier to pass a law against TikTok than a privacy law,” he joked.
Lack of national standard in privacy laws caused significant concern from several different sectors, but there is no consensus on whether it should be more or less strict, Chander noted.
Without a national standard, ensuring consent online becomes difficult as websites need to ensure that every user consents to the sharing of information through cookies and advertising. But each state has different rules, complicating efforts to build platforms with cross-state audiences for news publishers, for example, he noted.
California has passed laws such as Consumer Privacy Act 2018, giving consumers more control over the personal information companies collect from them. And since then the condition has passed offers which give consumers the right to correct inaccurate personal information a business has about them, as well as the right to limit the use and disclosure of that information.
Ripple effect on Elon Musk’s X?
If TikTok’s US ban comes to fruition, it could be used as a model in other parts of the world, especially in countries that criticize US apps for violating their domestic laws, Chander warned. Governments could claim that the US now recognizes the “dangers of foreign apps” and make their own demands for mandatory ownership of US apps.
As a potential example, he cited the Supreme Court of Brazil, which Elon Musk investigation for spreading fake news on its social platform X, as well as for alleged obstruction and criminal organization. If a Brazilian judge were to rule on X’s ban, “he could cite this TikTok law as support.”