TikTok and their Chinese-based owner Byte Dance are suing the Biden administration following President Biden’s signing of a bill forcing the company to sell TikTok or be banned from the US. Citing the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act as unconstitutional for violating the First Amendment, they believe Biden has overstepped his role.
Given the company’s blatant connections to the Chinese Communist Party, he flagged them as a risk to national security and now wants them out.
According to the lawsuit:
“Congress has taken the unprecedented step of expressly singling out and banning TikTok: a vibrant online forum for protected speech and expression used by 170 million Americans to create, share, and view videos over the Internet. For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban, and bars every American from participating in a unique online community with more than 1 billion people worldwide.”
Further, they contend that this is essentially an outright ban as completing a sale of the company by the January 18, 2025, deadline is essentially impossible. They believe the commercial capability, technological controls, and even the legal work needed to complete such a huge sale is simply unavailable in that timeframe. Operating in the US since 2017, they claim to have had no incidents in the country. Rather, they claim that not only is TikTok within the letter of the law, but they also do more to protect data than legally required.
Multiple whistleblowers from TikTok in the form of former and current employees have come forward to support the ban. Some have spoken to the federal government about what they were asked to do. Still, others have used social media platforms and smaller news outlets to tell the world about how bad the data farming on Americans is. No matter how they got the word out, the message has been consistent- TikTok is nothing more than a platform to mine data for the Chinese and manipulate people the world over.
