TikTok tells US Supreme Court ‘sell-or-ban’ law stems from company’s refusal to censor

Its filing comes as Justice Department argues the law is meant to cut the popular short-video app’s ties to the Chinese government

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The short-video app TikTok has some 170 million users in the US, where it faces a ban unless it is sold to a non-Chinese buyer. Photo: Reuters

Published: 5:59am, 4 Jan 2025Updated: 6:23am, 4 Jan 2025

TikTok on Friday challenged the US government’s assertion that the Chinese-owned app was being targeted owing to threats related to its ownership, suggesting that the push for a “sell-or-ban” law stemmed from the company’s refusal to censor certain viewpoints.

“The startling proposition that there should be no judicial scrutiny of a law shuttering a speech platform used by 170 million Americans would mean Congress could ban petitioners from operating TikTok explicitly because they refused to censor views Congress disfavours or to promote views it likes,” stated TikTok, and its parent company ByteDance, in their latest filing at the US Supreme Court.

The submission said several US lawmakers had accused the platform’s content of being “too pro-Palestine”.

The US government needed “evidence” to prove its assertions that ByteDance was headquartered in China and was subject to the direction and control of the Chinese government, it added.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear oral arguments in the case on January 10 after the law was upheld by a lower court in December. Photo: AFP

However, the US Department of Justice argued in its response on Friday that TikTok was misrepresenting the law as an attempt to suppress disfavoured views.