Time is ticking for TikTok. There are 10 days left for the social network to be banned in the US, and the Chinese firm is playing its last card this Friday: either they convince the Supreme Court to annul the law that has put the sword over their heads, or Joe Biden’s last action as US president will be to order its ban. A way to leave the White House in style and leave a problem in the office for his successor.
A little memory: last March, the US Congress approved the Act to Protect Americans from Applications Controlled by Foreign Enemies, with an overwhelming majority of congressmen and senators of both parties. President Biden ratified it on April 24. That law gives 270 days for Apps designated as “enemy controlled” move ownership to new owners that do not pose a “threat to the national security” of the United States. If they are put up for sale, the president could extend that limit for three more months. If not, when day 270 passes, they will become prohibited.
The law is directed almost exclusively against TikTokthe first social network that fell within that definition. And the clock began to count, and his legal ‘death’ will come on January 19, Biden’s last day in power. ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, has made no effort to sell its star network, so its last hope is in the Supreme Court. And for that battle he will have unexpected support: that of Donald Trump, who has asked that the law be paralyzed for a few months.
The first amendment, to the rescue?
TikTok has reached the Supreme Court after its unconstitutionality appeals against the law ended in defeat in all the courts it has gone to so far. This, then, is your last chance.right above the horn. And its key argument is that it would be violating the first amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits the Government from controlling access to information and reducing freedom of opinion.
However, the Justice Department and lower courts have pointed to numerous cases in which Congress has controlled access to media property, with the approval of judges. For decades, for example, television networks could only be in the hands of American investors. Furthermore, the other sentences point out, The ban is aimed “very specifically” at networks that pose a risk to national security. TikTok’s competitors are not in danger, and the app would no longer be under threat if ByteDance sold it to a company in any country other than China.
In the middle of all this, Trump has appeared. The future president wants to be the one to make the decision to ban, or not, TikTokwhich is why he has asked the Supreme Court to temporarily paralyze the law so that Biden cannot apply it and leave a fait accompli. “As a successful negotiator, I have the unique ability to negotiate a political resolution to the matter,” the magnate says in his document joining the appeal.
Trump’s turn is notable, since in his previous term he precisely tried to ban TikTok. At that time, It even pushed the Chinese firm to negotiate its sale to an alliance of American firms, with Oracle at the helm. But those plans came to nothing, and TikTok limited itself to taking the servers where it stores the personal data of North American users to Texas. Since then, Trump’s online account has skyrocketed, surpassing 10 million followers, and the president-elect appears to have reconsidered his position.
But judicial analysts believe that TikTok’s chances of surviving Biden’s term are slim. The majority points out that the Supreme Court does not usually interfere in national security laws, especially when they have very broad bipartisan support, and the legal text does not have any flagrant error that would allow it to be overturned for formal reasons. Even so, it is not ruled out that the judges appointed by Trump will look for some excuse to grant the ‘extra time’ that the president-elect has requested.
A complex prohibition
If, indeed, the Supreme Court confirms the ban, the key will be how to carry it out. Immediately, Both Apple and Google must remove the app from their stores in the US and no US server will be able to distribute copies for download.under threat of a considerable fine. But the millions of copies already downloaded will continue to work indefinitely, until users change mobile phones.
Here three paths can be opened. One is that a different social network, like Instagram or some US-owned ‘clone’ of TikTok, takes current users in the US, dragging the entire West behind. Another is that the network resists, and a ‘black market’ is created for phones with TikTok installed and trips abroad to download the program there. And the last one is a great division: that the US is left with its ‘substitute’ while this new alternative network and the original TikTok fight hard in Canada, Europe or Latin America, among others. But there is still one last step before these scenarios are on the table: the Supreme Court will have the last word.
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