The US Supreme Court has ruled that the TikTok ban is constitutional. Now what?
On Friday morning (January 17), the US Supreme Court ruled that the American government is within its rights to ban TikTok in the country. This was a 9-0 decision. I quote:
“There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community. But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary.
“For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the challenged provisions do not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights. The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is affirmed.”
There’s more.
“It is not clear that the Act itself directly regulates protected expressive activity, or conduct with an expressive component. Indeed, the Act does not regulate the creator petitioners at all. And it directly regulates ByteDance Ltd. and TikTok Inc. only through the divestiture requirement.”
[…]
“Data collection and analysis is a common practice in this digital age. But TikTok’s scale and susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects, justify differential treatment to address the Government’s national security concerns.”
[…]
“As applied to petitioners, the Act satisfies intermediate scrutiny. The challenged provisions further an important Government interest unrelated to the suppression of free expression and do not burden substantially more speech than necessary to further that interest.”
So now what? TikTok still faces a decision: Sell the American arm of the company to American interests or be banned in US. However, Joe Biden is not going to enforce the ban on his way out and Trumpy is cozy with the TikTok CEO who will be attending the inauguration on Monday. Will he use an executive order to postpone the deadline on banning TikTok? And–God forbid–will Elon Musk buy the platform? (“Pure fiction,” says TikTok.)
Not only are tens of millions of users on edge, but so is the recorded music industry. So many promotional and marketing campaigns are linked to TikTok. You know who’s happy? YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels. And so is RedNote, another Chinese company that’s being pitched as an alternative to TikTok.
The fallout should be interesting.
