United States: The Supreme Court on Friday grappled with a law that could decide the future of TikTok, an immensely popular social media application that boasts about 170 million active users.
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Congress passed the law, fearing that the app with the owner based in China was vulnerable to the influence of the Chinese government, thereby posing a risk to the nation.
The measure would essentially shut down Tiktok in the United States if its parent company, ByteDance, fails to divest it by January 19.
Though all the justices grilled both sides, the tenor and direction seemed to indicate more scrutiny on arguments by lawyers for TikTok and its users that the First Amendment prohibited Congress from enacting the law.
Justices tussle over the law
Although many of the justices were doubtful of the major part of the government’s justification for the law, that is the possibility of China “covertly” using TikTok to influence the information feed of Americans or harvest consumer data to fulfill its political ambitions, the New York Times reported.
Justice Kagan and Justice Neil M. Gorsuch—a conservative, pointed out that everybody now understands that China is behind TikTok.
They seemed concerned if the government’s concern to stop ‘covert’ leveraging of the platform by a foreign adversary could be done in a lighter way, perhaps by adding a disclaimer that warns users of that risk.
Republican President-elect Donald J. Trump has requested the Supreme Court to issue an injunction to stop the law from going into effect until Trump assumes office on January 20.
Alternate to TikTok
There have been a few whispers about Lemon8, a social media app that is highly graphic and almost entirely lifestyle-based and has the same Chinese parent company as TikTok, ByteDance.
Essentially a hybrid of Instagram and Pinterest, Lemon8 only started in Japan in 2020 and is still gradually expanding to other international locations, the New York Times reported.
Moreover, in 2023, the lawmakers of Washington were silently urging the content creators to join Lemon8 while grilling TikTok’s chief executive, ByteDance.