TikTok Takedown
A US federal appeals court has rejected a challenge to the law that prevents popular apps that collect data on Americans from being controlled by a foreign adversary.
The decision puts the ongoing operation of social media network TikTok, a subsidiary of China-based ByteDance, at risk.
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The law at issue, initially known as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PFACAA), became part of the foreign assistance package passed in April, after which it was approved by President Biden. It limits foreign adversaries from collecting data through adversary-controlled software applications. It also identifies ByteDance and TikTok by name, while potentially applying to code controlled by other foreign entities.
The court’s opinion (PDF) is not particularly long. As this is framed as a question of national security, the court gives substantial deference to the government’s assessment of TikTok’s threat. It also views the legislation passed earlier this year to limit data brokers as a complementary component of this TikTok divest-or-ban law.
I still do not find this argument particularly compelling. There is still too much dependence on classified information and too little public evidence. A generous interpretation of this is the court knows something I do not, and perhaps this is completely justified. But who knows?
David Shepardson (Hacker News):
The chair and top Democrat on a U.S. House of Representatives committee on China told the CEOs of Google-parent Alphabet and Apple on Friday they must be ready to remove TikTok from their U.S. app stores on Jan. 19.
David Shepardson and Krystal Hu (Hacker News):
TikTok plans to shut U.S. operations of its social media app used by 170 million Americans on Sunday, when a federal ban is set to take effect, barring a last-minute reprieve, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
ACLU (Hacker News):
As explained in the friend-of-the-court brief the ACLU and its partners filed with the Supreme Court, under the First Amendment the government must meet an extraordinarily high bar to ban an entire communications platform. To ban TikTok, the government must show that the ban is the only way to prevent serious, imminent harm to national security and that the ban limits no more speech than necessary to accomplish that purpose. The government has not come close to meeting that standard.
Jonathan Vanian (PDF, Hacker News, MacRumors, Nick Heer):
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the law requiring China-based ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok by Sunday or face an effective ban of the popular social video app in the U.S.
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In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration, upholding the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which President Joe Biden signed in April.
The opinion (PDF) is predicated solely on data collection concerns. The justices did not even consider questions about TikTok’s recommendations system, finding that national security alone is worth a change in TikTok’s ownership.
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These are two ideologically divergent justices similarly compelled by arguments for TikTok to moderate and recommend as it sees fit. Perhaps the court would have ultimately come down differently on these questions if the justices had spent more time considering them, but all this produced is understandable concern over user data. Requiring TikTok to be sold off or banning it is not very useful for correcting that misbehaviour, but that was not the question before the court.
However, other than claims by Forbes that ByteDance spied on journalists, our government didn’t provide a list of why TikTok was such a threat—if we had a “here’s what they’re collecting in shady ways and how it will be used against you” list, I’d be satisfied.
Instead, we get a vague “trust us” message from the gerontocracy that would probably fall for your run-of-the-mill phishing scam and be delighted by AI images on Facebook. If TikTok is so bad, why not hold others accountable for similar actions?
Kyle Wiggers and Anthony Ha (Hacker News):
TikTok users began receiving a message about the ban around 10:30 p.m. Eastern on Saturday evening, and the app also disappeared from the Apple and Google Play app stores. As of Sunday morning, some users in the U.S. could still access TikTok via the web.
“Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now,” the company’s message reads. “A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now.”
Kevin Collier et al. (Hacker News, MacRumors, John Gruber, Nick Heer):
TikTok said Sunday that it would be restoring service to U.S. users after blocking it the evening before.
In a statement, TikTok said its video platform was coming back online after President-elect Donald Trump provided the necessary assurances to the company’s service providers.
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The law banning TikTok, which was scheduled to go into effect Sunday, allows the president to grant a 90-day extension before the ban is enforced, provided certain criteria are met.
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Prior to the ban’s implementation, both Biden and the incoming Trump administration appeared to reverse their earlier positions on TikTok.
Second, the order’s 75-day enforcement suspension deliberately bypasses PAFACAA’s built-in mechanism for 90-day extensions, which requires certification to Congress that a legally binding divestment process is underway.
TikTok and ByteDance Ltd. apps are no longer available in the United States, and visitors to the United States might have limited access to features.
Apple is obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it operates. Pursuant to the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, apps developed by ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiaries — including TikTok, CapCut, Lemon8, and others — will no longer be available for download or updates on the App Store for users in the United States starting January 19, 2025.
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Users visiting from outside the United States with their Apple Account set to a country or region that is not the United States are unable to download, update, or make in-app purchases and new subscriptions inside ByteDance Ltd. apps while within the land or maritime borders of the United States.
Apple tonight updated its beta testing app TestFlight, seemingly to block U.S. users from accessing the TikTok beta on the iPhone and other devices.
[The] notion of a U.S. government stake in a social media platform feels like a plot twist straight out of a dystopian novel, and the idea that a government would want to own (or guide the disposal of) half of a private company is not just bizarre; it raises serious questions about the implications for privacy and control over digital spaces.
Meanwhile, companies like Apple and Google are playing it safe, adhering to the law while TikTok’s back-end providers seem to be banking on a promise from a not-yet-president either that or Oracle must be really confident in their legal team (which is the true core of their business, so I guess that makes sense).
Previously:
