The US Supreme Court on January 17, 2025, upheld a law requiring TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, to buy the video game by January 19, 2025, or experience a global restrictions on the game. In a unanimous decision, the judge rejected TikTok’s say that the laws violates its First Amendment rights.
The court’s decision is the most recent development in a long story regarding the destiny of an app that is commonly used, particularly among young Americans, but which some politicians in Washington claim pose a security risk.
It’s unlikely that the story will finish with this decision. In the final days of his presidency, Vice President Joe Biden declared that he would not put the rules to the test. Donald Trump, the president-elect, apparently has an executive purchase in mind and plans to change the ban.
But why is TikTok provocative? Are the promises that it poses a threat to national security accurate? And what will the outcome of the case mean for free talk? The Conversation’s donors have been on finger to answer these questions.
1. An adviser for the Foreign government?
Lawmakers who wanted to outlaw TikTok or at least break its ties to China worry that the app will allow the Chinese Communist Party to affect Americans or use their information for deception. However, how much of an impact does TikTok have on the Chinese state? Shaomin Li, a professor of China’s social economy and firm at Old Dominion University, addresses that concern.
Li explains that the connection between TikTok, ByteDance, and the Chinese Communist Party is complex; rather, it isn’t just Beijing officials who instruct ByteDance to climb, and the parent company who controls how great its subsidiary did move. Instead, people are subject to a certain obligation, as with all businesses in China, when it comes to advancing national objectives. In China, private corporations, such as ByteDance, operate as joint initiatives with the condition.
No matter whether ByteDance has formal ties to the group, there will be the implicit understanding that the administration is working for two managers: the company’s traders and, more important, their political advisors who represent the party, Li writes. ” But most important, when the passions of the two leaders issue, the party surpasses”.
2. Using customer data to extract it
The dangers that TikTok poses to US customers are similar to those that plague many well-known programs, in particular because it gathers information about you. ByteDance and any other person who has or obtains access to that data, including contact details and website checking, as well as all of the data you post and send via the app.
According to Doug Jacobson, a scholar in security at Iowa State University, US politicians and officials are concerned that TikTok user information could be used by the Chinese state to spy on Americans. Government thieves might be able to swindle people into revealing more private information using the TikTok data.
But if the goal is to counter Chinese thieves, banning TikTok is likely to show too much, too soon. According to Jacobson,” the Chinese state has previously collected personal information from at least 80 % of the US population through several means.” The Chinese authorities even has access to the huge market for personal data, along with anyone else who has money.
3. The security risks associated with a moratorium
By outlawing TikTok, it might also produce American people more vulnerable to hackers of all kinds. Robert Olson, a researcher at the Rochester Institute of Technology, claims that many of the 170 million users of TikTok may try to circumvent a ban on the app, which would have adverse effects on their online safety.
If TikTok ends up banned from Apple’s and Google’s app stores, people may try to access the software somewhere via learned. Users are now more susceptible to infection that purports to be the TikTok application thanks to this maneuvering around the Apple and Google application stores. In order to keep the software installed, TikTok people might also be motivated to avoid Apple and Google safety measures, which may increase the vulnerability of their phones.
” I find it unlikely that a TikTok ban]is ] technologically enforceable”, Olson writes. This legislation, which aims to improve cybersecurity, may inspire users to engage in riskier online behavior.
4. First Amendment issues
ByteDance filed a constitutional challenge to the US government, alleging that it is violating First Amendment right. ByteDance had basis for its state, according to Georgetown University scholars Anupam Chander and Gautam Hans of Cornell University, and the implications extend beyond this situation.
TikTok is a publisher of people ‘ videos online. According to Chander and Hans, forcing ByteDance to sell TikTok is a form of due caution, the government preventing talk from occurring.
Congress’s goal with the laws is to change the nature of the platform, they write,” by forcibly selling TikTok to an object without any connections to the Chinese Communist Party.” That kind of government activity raises one of the main issues that the First Amendment was intended to shield from: state intervention in private party statement.
5. What about the others?
The forced sale to a US-based company or the ban of TikTok in the US are, according to Arizona State advertising professor Sarah Florini, a dubious approach to solving the issues the law aims to address: possible Chinese government control in the US, damage to teenagers, and data privacy violations.
The Chinese government and other US adversaries have long attempted to influence American public opinion through social media apps owned by US companies. The Facebook whistleblower case clearly demonstrated how dangerous Teens are to teens. And on the open and black markets, a lot of Americans ‘ personal data is already accessible to any buyer.
” Concerns about TikTok are not unfounded, but they are also not unique. According to Florini, US-based social media has been posing threats like TikTok has for more than ten years.
This is a revised version of an article that was first published on September 16, 2024.
The Conversation’s science and technology editor is Matt Williams, and it has two senior international editors.
This article was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.