The Chinese company ByteDance, owner of the social network TikTok, announced on Tuesday that it had filed an appeal against the law that requires it to sell its US division within nine months. The law had been signed less than two weeks ago by President Joe Biden, after being approved by Congress. ByteDance’s appeal is based on the alleged unconstitutionality of the law, which would violate the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which protects freedom of expression. The appeal has been filed with the Washington Court of Appeals, but many experts say the case will likely reach the Supreme Court.
The law obliges ByteDance to sell the TikTok social network and all related technologies, such as its algorithm, to an investor not linked to the Chinese government within nine months (which can become twelve). If ByteDance is unable to find a buyer by then, the law provides for a blocking of the platform in the United States.
Many US politicians have long been concerned about the Chinese government’s close relationship with ByteDance (and in general with all the country’s large companies). Over 170 million Americans are registered on TikTok, which collects large amounts of data on users: the promoters of the law fear that it could pass it to the Chinese government for intelligence purposes. Another concern concerns the possibility that the Chinese government could use the TikTok algorithm, the very effective tool with which the platform recommends to users the videos it considers most attractive to them, to promote or censor certain contents, thus influencing the American population.
ByteDance claims that selling the part of the company that operates in the US market is not feasible “for commercial, technological and legal reasons”, due to the global nature of the social network, and that the resulting ban on operating would be a violation of freedom of expression.
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