A motion by ByteDance urging the government to stop operating in the US and stop reporting in the case of a national security violation
Last month, President Joe Biden signed a law giving ByteDance nine months to divest TikTok or cease operations in the US, citing national security concerns. The government hasn’t provided evidence of the Chinese government’s misuse of TikTok according to the complaint.
In a petition filed in the Court of Appeals, the company said the legislation is against the constitution and suppresses speech among millions of Americans.
According to the filing, the law is based on “speculative and analytically flawed concerns about data security and content manipulation — concerns that, even if grounded in fact, could be addressed through far less restrictive and more narrowly tailored means.”
Constitutional scholars say there are few ways for the government to restrict speech in a way that would survive a legal challenge. If the government can demonstrate a national security risk it’s one of those ways. Legal experts say the government needs to show the speech suppression was the least restrictive option.
The Chinese government challenges the U.S. ban in court: Why is Beijing so concerned about the popularity of TikTok? The tech industry argues that it is unconstitutional
ByteDance, not TikTok, developed and controls the algorithm that determines what millions see on the app every day. The US tech industry has not been able to challenge TikTok’s hold on the short-form video market. Experts say key to its success is its highly engaging and hyper-personalized video-ranking algorithm.
Beijing could affect the views of Americans by taking over what videos are put on the platform, according to some people in Washington. That concern has only become heightened seven months before a presidential election.
There is no public example of the Chinese government attempting to use TikTok as espionage or data collection tool. No evidence that the Chinese government has ever given control over what American users see on TikTok.
TikTok, for its part, says it has invested $2 billion on a plan, dubbed Project Texas, to separate its U.S. operation from its Chinese parent company. It deleted all of Americans’ data from foreign servers and relocated all of the data to servers on U.S. soil overseen by the Austin-based tech company Oracle.
The plan was supposed to build trust with users and congress, but it turns out that data was moving between staff in California and Beijing.
The former Treasury Secretary told NPR that he is going to get a group of investors together to purchase TikTok without the app’s algorithm.
During his sessions at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles, which he declined to answer further questions about, he said that the proposal to purchase the app was still in the works but did not say when it would be submitted.
The ByteDance Legacy Challenge in the U.S. Does not imply a Violation of a High-Tensor Model
ByteDance does not intend to let go of its service despite the new law in the U.S. Furthermore, winning the support of China would be necessary, and officials in Beijing are adamantly against any forced sale.
The algorithm, which involves millions of lines of software code developed by thousands of engineers over many years, cannot be easily transferred to the U.S., even if China did allow it, TikTok’s challenge states.
“Without public discussion of what exactly the risks are, however, it’s difficult to determine why the courts should validate such an unprecedented law,” says Hans.