Free speech clashed with national security before a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., which unanimously held last Friday that the TikTok app can be banned in the U.S.
The court upheld a law known as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, requiring the social media app to divest its Chinese ownership if it wants to keep operating. It was "precisely" because of TikTok's "expansive reach" that both Congress and the president determined that divesting it from China's control "is essential to protect our national security," the judges wrote.
The sell-or-ban law, signed by President Biden in April, passed with bipartisan support after Congress received classified briefings from the intelligence community about China’s ability to use TikTok to surveil Americans and spread Chinese propaganda.
TikTok has operated in the U.S. since 2018. It instantly exploded in popularity, with its short-form video format, content-recommendation formula and easy editing features. It is now the fifth-most widely used social-media platform in the U.S.
The ban doesn’t criminalize the use of the app by TikTok’s 170 million U.S. fans. But it prohibits mobile app stores, from letting users download or update it, and bars internet hosting services from supporting the app, effectively shutting TikTok down in the U.S.
The decision, relying heavily on U.S. warnings that Beijing can use the app’s parent company, China’s ByteDance, to access U.S. users’ data, found that national security trumped TikTok’s free speech rights.
The First Amendment “exists to protect free speech in the United........