The US Department of Justice does not consider it necessary to give TikTok another chance to save American business

At the end of December, US President-elect Donald Trump filed a petition with the Supreme Court, asking to postpone the consideration of the case on banning the activities of the social network TikTok in the United States. The Justice Department this week said it saw no point in such a delay and is calling for a review of the case before Trump takes office.

Image source: Unsplash, Solen Feyissa

The court hearing is due to take place on January 10, and if the Chinese company ByteDance does not agree to sell the assets of the social network TikTok that it owns in the United States, then the latter’s activities will be prohibited in the country from January 19, the day before the inauguration of the elected US President. According to representatives of the Ministry of Justice, TikTok has not demonstrated to the country’s authorities any arguments that would allow it to count on victory in this case, and therefore there is no point in pausing the process. Donald Trump’s statements also failed to convince the department. With such statements, the Ministry recommends that the Supreme Court not grant Trump’s request for additional time to consider the case.

Representatives of TikTok demand that the law banning the activities of the social network in the United States be declared unconstitutional, or that American justice authorities be given more time to consider this case. According to TikTok representatives, the precedent highlights the threat to freedom of speech in the United States. The country’s authorities, banning the activities of the platform on which 170 million Americans express their opinions, according to TikTok representatives, are simply doing this due to the inability of Congress to influence the information published by citizens on the pages of the social network.

The US government continues to insist that the Chinese-controlled social network TikTok is capable of not only ideologically influencing the country’s citizens, but also collecting sensitive information about them. The legislative and executive branches of the US government, according to representatives of the Department of Justice, agree that Chinese control of TikTok poses a significant threat to US national security. If TikTok’s American business is sold to another company, freedom of speech on the platform will be preserved, according to the department. A US federal appeals court upheld the law last month, affirming that Congress and the president have sufficient national security powers to make the decisions.