Donald Trump this Friday asked the Supreme Court of the United States of America (USA) to suspend a federal law that could result in the ban of the social network TikTok, or force its sale. The President-elect says that time should be given to seek a “political resolution” to the matter after taking office.
TikTok and its parent company, China’s ByteDance, are fighting to keep the popular app running in the United States after Congress passed a law in April to ban the social network if it is not sold by March 19. January.
TikTok and ByteDance have already tried to overturn the law once, and the Supreme Court agreed to rule on the case. If the court rules against TikTok and there is no sale, the social network could even be banned in the US on January 19, the day before Donald Trump’s inauguration.
“This case presents a difficult, new and unprecedented tension between free speech rights on the one hand, and foreign policy and national security concerns on the other,” Trump said in a document filed with the court on Friday.
“A stay would vitally give President Trump the opportunity to seek a political resolution that could obviate the Court’s need to decide these constitutionally significant questions,” the document said.
Several free speech rights defenders told the Supreme Court this Friday that the law evokes censorship regimes applied by “authoritarian enemies” of the United States.
Trump indicated this week that he is in favor of TikTok continuing to operate in the United States for at least a little longer, pointing out that he had achieved billions of views on this social network during the presidential campaign.
The US Department of Justice considers Chinese control of TikTok to be a continued risk to the country’s national security.
TikTok says the Justice Department misrepresented the social network’s connections to China, and argues that its content recommendation engine and user data are stored in the United States, on cloud servers operated by US-based Oracle, while Content moderation decisions that affect US users are made in the US.
On December 14, the United States court rejected an appeal from ByteDance and confirmed that TikTok will be banned in the country if the Chinese company does not sell the video platform by January 19.
Source: rr.sapo.pt
