ByteDance, which owns the short-video service TikTok, filed a lawsuit in a US federal appeals court saying the Justice Department’s claims about alleged ties to the Chinese government are unfounded.
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In its appeal, ByteDance called for rejecting the ministry’s demands to sell TikTok’s American assets under the threat of completely blocking the platform in the United States. TikTok said in a statement that the Justice Department made several mistakes in its handling of the matter. Last month, agency lawyers said the app poses a national security threat because it allows Chinese authorities to collect data on US users of the service and covertly manipulate the content they see.
This week, representatives of TikTok once again stated that the content recommendation mechanism and American data are stored exclusively in the United States, for which they use a cloud platform managed by Oracle. It is also noted that decisions on moderation of content shown to Americans are made in the United States.
Let us recall that on April 24, American President Joseph Biden signed a decree according to which ByteDance has until January 19 next year to sell TikTok’s American assets. If this is not done within the specified period, the service faces complete blocking in the country. The White House stated that the presidential administration does not want to block TikTok, but at the same time, for reasons of national security, the service must change its owner.
Oral arguments in ByteDance’s lawsuit will be held in the appeals court on September 16. Thus, the question of the fate of the service will be decided in the final weeks before the upcoming presidential elections, which will be held on November 5. In June of this year, US presidential candidate Donald Trump joined TikTok and said that he would never support a ban on the service in the country. Another candidate for the top job, incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris, also joined the TikTok community in July to use the social network in her election campaign.