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TikTok appeals to freedom of expression to avoid the “guillotine” in the United States


TikTok’s survival hangs in the balance in the United States. However, the Chinese social network is ready to fight against the law that condemns it to the disappearance of app stores overseas if it does not agree to divest itself of its American subsidiary. TikTok argued before a US court on Monday that The law passed last April in the United States would have a major impact on the freedom of expression of those who use its platform in the North American country.

He fears that personal data of American TikTok users could potentially be at the mercy of the Chinese government It was the one that ultimately led to the law that forced the TikTok subsidiary to be sold or, failing that, to disappear from the app stores in the United States.

TikTok and ByteDance, who have always denied their links with the Chinese authorities, They turned to the courts last May to try to block legislation they called unconstitutional. and would violate in fact the freedom of expression of its 170 million users in the United States.

A three-judge panel heard arguments put forward by TikTok yesterday to try to stop the rule that threatens its survival in the United States. in a Washington DC appeals court

“This law imposes an unprecedented ban on free speech based on future risks of a completely undetermined nature,” Andrew Pincus, a lawyer for TikTok and ByteDance, told the court.

The social network’s lawyer also insisted before the magistrates that the company is in no way the property of the Beijing Executive.. “TikTok is owned by ByteDance Limited, a company domiciled in the Cayman Islands,” Pincus stressed. However, Judge Sri Srinivasan replied to Pincus that the company “was subject to the control of China.”

Arguments for and against banning TikTok in the US clashed at a hearing held yesterday in the Washington DC court of appeals

Pincus then claimed that the US government had found no evidence of any illegal activity on TikTok and that The platform was being punished on the mere suspicion that there could be problems in the future.

TikTok’s lawyer also stressed that the sale of the social network’s US subsidiary was “unfeasible” and that the law that threatens the survival of the social network in the United States constitutes an unprecedented veto for a single “player.”

However, Justice Ginsberg then emphasized that The law passed last April in the United States was a ban on the current control arrangement of TikTok, not the company itself.

TikTok and ByteDance appeared in court yesterday, accompanied by a group of content creators directly affected by the US government’s regulation. Jeffrey Fisher, a representative for those content creators, insisted that banning TikTok would violate the creators’ constitutional right to work freely with the publisher of their choice.

For his part, Daniel Tenny, a lawyer for the United States Department of Justice, denounced that lThe messages that were spread on TikTok were governed by an algorithm ultimately controlled by engineers based in China.which could ultimately lead to the dissemination of Beijing government propaganda through this channel.

Some experts, however, believe that the law to force the sale of TikTok in the United States (or banish the social network from the app stores in the North American country) It would be a dangerous precedent that authoritarian regimes around the world could exploit for their own benefit. to justify new restrictions on the right of its own citizens to access information and media from abroad.

Regardless of what the appeals court decides after yesterday’s hearing, It seems that the case could drag on for months (or even years). And since the positions of the two parties involved in the case are completely opposed (and their arguments would also be perfectly valid on the legal level, according to experts), the case could end up going to trial. Supreme Court of the United Statesthe highest court across the pond.


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