Twelve days from now, TikTok could be out of business in the United States. Middle school teachers, your days of enduring students who randomly blurt out “Skibbity!” and “Low taper fade!” might soon be over.
Of course, TikTok is about far more than nerve-grating adolescent catchphrases. It has become the most popular social media site in the United States, with approximately 170 million users – half the country’s population. And while the site still offers lip-synched dance videos and other benign distractions, it also has become an undeniably influential platform for political discourse. That’s not to say that TikTok has achieved the gravitas of The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour but, qualitative judgments aside, it’s where tens of millions of Americans get their news.
TikTok’s future in the United States now sits squarely in the hands of the Supreme Court, which will hear oral arguments Friday. At its core, the case features a head-on collision between national security and the First Amendment.
At issue is a law passed in 2024 that provides TikTok with an ultimatum: sell to U.S.-based owners by January 19, 2025, or be banned in the country altogether. (TikTok is a dense tangle of corporations and subsidiaries; as relevant here, TikTok Inc. is an American company whose ultimate corporate parent, ByteDance Ltd., is incorporated in the Cayman Islands but headquartered and primarily operated in China.)
In its Supreme Court brief, the Biden administration argues in defense of the law that it does not implicate the First Amendment at all because it relates not to the content or viewpoint of speech, but rather only to “foreign adversary control” of the platform. After all, TikTok can stay in business, so long as it is sold to a U.S.-based owner. (TikTok claims this is impossible by the January 19 deadline.) And any restriction on free speech is justified to protect national security,........