TikTok says it plans to shut down in U.S. unless Supreme Court saves it
Last April's TikTok ban is set to go into effect one day before the social media company's frenemy Donald Trump takes office.
Image: Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Social media service TikTok is now saying it’ll shut its U.S. operations down some time in the next 10 days, unless the Supreme Court overturns a law (passed back in April 2024) ordering the service’s Chinese owners to sell it. All of which arrives at a very weird moment in American politics: The law itself is set to go into effect on January 19, one day before Donald Trump is set to re-take the office of President, and will thus ostensibly be responsible for enforcing a law passed by the Biden administration, and which runs counter to one of his own very loudly made campaign promises
Trump—who actually pushed for a TikTok ban himself, back when such a thing seemed politically expedient/no one had explained to him how many low-info voters he could reach with it—has also made a bizarre effort to lobby the Court to kick the can a bit, with a lawyer for his incoming administration filing a brief asking the Justices to delay ruling because “President Trump alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the Government.” (Side note: Four years of respite from Trump-style wrestling patter being part of official U.S. documentation has, we regret to report, critically weakened our ability to stomach it past what was already a very low threshold.)
The arguments for and against here have, as always, boiled down to security vs. free speech. Biden and the organizers of the law—which, it’s worth noting, passed with hefty bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate—have said they’re uncomfortable with millions of Americans uploading their data daily to a company whose own government could demand it all be turned over. TikTok argues that a) that’s never happened, and b) the whole thing runs in violation of the First Amendment. Lower courts have taken the government’s side, leaving the Supreme Court as the final contest for the battle—and TikTok announcing it’ll be shutting down its U.S. services, at least temporarily, if the law doesn’t get overturned.