The Supreme Court has made a landmark decision that will forever change the landscape of digital media. It has ruled, unanimously, to uphold a law that will cause the video platform TikTok to be banned nationwide on Sunday. This is despite promises by President-Elect Donald Trump to rescue the wildly popular app.
The ruling, issued on January 17th, claims the law in question does not violate the First Amendment, because the law is against TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, not its right to free speech. The court believes ByteDance has provided user data to the Chinese government, and/or has a direct influence on the content users see. Opposition to the ban cites a failure to provide evidence that the app had done this. Also, that it has become an invaluable source of news, giving it protection under the First Amendment.
If ByteDance doesn’t sell the app by January 19th, web-hosts and mobile app stores will be barred from offering it.
“There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community,” the ruling reads. “But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary. For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the challenged provisions do not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights.”
The Impact of a TikTok Ban
Millions of Americans actively engage with videos each month, meaning this ban will cause a loss in income for hundreds of thousands of creators, here and abroad. While other short-form video platforms do exist, none have even come close to TikTok’s numbers, and yes that includes the glory days of Vine.
Last month, Trump filed a friend-of-the-court brief seeking to delay the law coming into effect. Under the belief that he could find a solution that would take the court’s concerns over national security into account. All while still allowing the app to exist as a platform for free speech. However, this solution has seemingly not materialized.
The ban also means that the government, to some degree, is dictating the ownership of a privately created online platform. The government argues that this ban is necessary to prevent China from spreading misinformation and collecting Americans’ private information. “Congress and the president were concerned” that “China was accessing information about millions of Americans, tens of millions of Americans, including teenagers, people in their 20s,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh said earlier this month.
“For the reasons we have explained, requiring divestiture for the purpose of preventing a foreign adversary from accessing the sensitive data of 170 million U. S. TikTok users is not a subtle means of exercising a content preference,” the order states. “The prohibitions, TikTok-specific designation, and divestiture requirement regulate TikTok based on a content-neutral data collection interest. And TikTok has special characteristics — a foreign adversary’s ability to leverage its control over the platform to collect vast amounts of personal data from 170 million U. S. users — that justify this differential treatment.”
We’ll keep you posted on updates about the future of TikTok as they become available.
