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As it stands now, TikTok is set to be banned in the US on 19 January unless ByteDance sells the app.
A US federal appeals court rejected TikTok’s request for an injunction which sought to stop the enforcement of its upcoming ban in the country.
Now, with just a month left before the social media platform is exiled from the US, attorneys for TikTok and its China-based owner ByteDance are expected to appeal to the US Supreme Court. However, it is unclear whether the Supreme Court will take up the case.
TikTok filed for the emergency injunction last week following a federal appeals court ruling on 6 December that upheld a statute brought by US president Joe Biden earlier this year, requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok to an approved buyer due to national security concerns or face a ban in the country – which happens to be one of TikTok’s largest markets with 170m users.
In the emergency injunction, TikTok requested the US government for a “modest delay in enforcing the Act,” which, the platform said would allow “breathing room for the Supreme Court to conduct an orderly review”, as well as allow the incoming Trump administration to “evaluate this matter” before one of the country’s “most important speech platforms” (as it refers to itself) is banned.
The app has been attempting to overturn its ban in the country for months, and started the process of suing the US government in May of this year.
However, the US sees TikTok as a risk to national security due to ByteDance’s relationship with China. Previous media investigations into the platform have claimed that TikTok had stored the data of some US and European users on servers in China. Meanwhile, some former employees told Fortune that the company’s independence from China is largely cosmetic.
The increasingly hostile relationship between the two economic giants has also resulted in other sanctions aimed at hindering each other’s chip-making capabilities, with China launching an investigation into the US chipmaker Nvidia for allegedly violating the country’s antitrust policies over a business acquisition that the country had previously approved.
Although the incoming president Donald Trump has a hard-line approach towards Chinese chips and held similar views towards TikTok – even attempting to ban the app himself during his previous administration – he has since joined the platform and made campaign claims that he will “save TikTok in America” if he won the election.
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