TikTok Still On Track for January Ban as Appeals Court Upholds Ruling

Popular social network TikTok did not receive a reprieve from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and it is still facing a ban that is set to be enacted in January, reports The Wall Street Journal.

TikTok and several of the social network's users challenged an April bill that is forcing Chinese company ByteDance to sell TikTok. The bill provided ByteDance with a nine-month period to sell TikTok to a company outside of China, and if the sale doesn't happen, TikTok won't be able to be distributed in the United States.

TikTok claimed that the bill was unconstitutional because it infringes on free speech, but the court rejected that claim.

While the ban is set to go into effect in January, TikTok is likely to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking an emergency stay. From there, the Supreme Court will decide whether to hear the case.

If TikTok is banned, Google, Apple, and other app distributors will not be able to provide the app for download, nor offer updates to the app. Internet hosting services will also be blocked from supporting the app, giving U.S. users no way to download it. TikTok users will, however, be able to keep using the app so long as it functions.

ByteDance does not plan to sell TikTok, and even if the company complied and did so, China would need to approve the sale. The Chinese government has made it clear that it will firmly oppose any sale of the TikTok app. ByteDance says that it would be impossible to give the TikTok source code to a new owner because it would take years for new engineers to become familiar enough with it to perform routine maintenance.

U.S. lawmakers want TikTok sold to a non-China company over concerns that the Chinese government could force ByteDance to hand over data from users in the United States, and there have also been suggestions that China could use TikTok to spread political propaganda.

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