The Supreme Court unanimously upheld a law that threatens to shut down the wildly popular TikTok social media platform in the US as soon as Sunday, ruling that free speech rights must yield to concerns that Chinese control of the app creates a national-security risk.
The high court said Friday Congress’ “well-supported” concerns about Chinese data collection justified a law that singled out TikTok. The measure requires ByteDance Ltd. to sell the American version of the video-sharing app by Jan. 19 or face a ban.
“TikTok’s scale and susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects, justify differential treatment to address the government’s national-security concerns,” the court said in an unsigned opinion.
The decision opens an uncertain chapter for TikTok and its 170 million US users. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to save TikTok and could choose to suspend enforcement of the new law once he takes office on Monday.
But the impact of that move would depend on the response of the tech companies that host and distribute TikTok, including Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. Under the law, those companies would face the prospect of massive fines for continuing to support TikTok, and they would have to decide whether assurances from the Trump administration provide sufficient legal cover.
Credit: Bloomberg
