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The Supreme Court unanimously upheld a law that threatens to shut down the wildly popular TikTok social media platform in the US as soon as Sunday, ruling that free speech rights must yield to concerns that Chinese control of the app creates a national-security risk.
The high court said Friday Congress’ “well-supported” concerns about Chinese data collection justified a law that singled out TikTok. The measure requires ByteDance Ltd. to sell the American version of the video-sharing app by Jan. 19 or face a ban.
“TikTok’s scale and susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects, justify differential treatment to address the government’s national-security concerns,” the court said in an unsigned opinion.
The decision opens an uncertain chapter for TikTok and its 170 million US users. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to save TikTok and could choose to suspend enforcement of the new law once he takes office on Monday.
But the impact of that move would depend on the response of the tech companies that host and distribute TikTok, including Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc’s Google. Under the law, those companies would face the prospect of massive fines for continuing to support TikTok, and they would have to decide whether assurances from the Trump administration provide sufficient legal cover.
“My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation,” Trump said Friday in a social media post.
Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Michael Waltz, said Thursday on Fox News that the administration will “put measures in place to keep TikTok from going dark.” But TikTok may be preparing to shut the platform on Sunday, according to reports this week in The Information and Reuters.
In a video posted after the ruling, TikTok Chief Executive Shou Chew thanked Trump for “his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States.” He said the company was “fighting to protect the constitutional right to free speech for the more than 170 million Americans who use our platform every day to connect, create, discover and achieve their dreams.”
ByteDance has insisted it won’t consider a sale, though the imminence of the ban could prompt the company to reconsider. Chinese officials are evaluating a potential option that involves Elon Musk acquiring the US operations of TikTok.
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