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Updated 17:24 IST, December 17th 2024

TikTok Requests US Supreme Court to Block Ban on its US Operations

TikTok, an online video entertainment platform, on Monday requested the United States Supreme Court to temporarily halt the forced sale order issued by the U.S. government against the platform.

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TikTok | Image: Freepik

TikTok, an online video entertainment platform, on Monday requested the United States Supreme Court to temporarily halt the forced sale order issued by the U.S. government against the platform.

TikTok is asking the Court to do what it has traditionally done in free speech cases: apply the most rigorous scrutiny to speech bans and conclude that it violates the First Amendment, according to TikTok.

On April 24th, U.S. President Joe Biden signed a bill demanding that ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok headquartered in Beijing, sell TikTok to a non-Chinese buyer within 270 days or else be banned from use in the U.S.

The banning of the platform would result in a massive and unprecedented censorship of over 170 million Americans on January 19, 2025. Estimates show that small businesses on TikTok would lose more than 1 billion U.S. dollars in revenue and creators would suffer almost 300 million U.S. dollars in lost earnings in just one month unless the ban is halted, said TikTok.

On May 7th, TikTok filed a lawsuit seeking to block this bill, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected the appeal on December 6th.

Gary Clyde Hufbauer, a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said that there is no evidence to suggest that TikTok engages in surveillance activities and stressed that many U.S. policies are highly politicized.

Published 17:24 IST, December 17th 2024