Court Rejects TikTok’s Bid to Control Americans and Be Controlled by the CCP
TikTok suffered a major legal setback as a federal court rejected the company’s petition to overturn the law that requires TikTok either to find an American owner or face a ban in the United States as early as January 19, 2025. If the ban is enforced, it could significantly impact the popular made-in-China app’s millions of users in the United States, as well as the company’s global operations.
Since 2020, TikTok (which is owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based internet technology company) has been embroiled in a legal battle in the U.S., coinciding with the app’s explosive popularity. The app, which became a source of entertainment for bored young people under Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns, is now under scrutiny. As its user base has grown, so have the app’s problems. TikTok’s data collection practices, which include acquiring IP addresses, browsing history, and biometric information, have raised serious privacy and data security concerns.
A Wall Street Journal analysis found that TikTok’s robust algorithm is a major reason why young people are addicted to smartphones. The app often pushes young users “deep into harmful rabbit holes of content” that “glorif[ies] eating disorders, drugs, violence” and makes it difficult for users to escape. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said TikTok and social media platforms “are specifically designed to create the digital dependencies that fuel mental illness and anxiety, to fray children’s bonds with their parents and siblings. Federal policy cannot allow this industrial-scale child abuse to continue.”
TikTok is also known to serve as Communist China’s propaganda tool by extending Beijing’s censorship to non-Chinese citizens overseas. The app reportedly instructs its content moderators to “censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, or the banned religious group Falun Gong,” all sensitive subjects that the Chinese government has censored for decades. (Read more from “Court Rejects TikTok’s Bid to Control Americans and Be Controlled by the CCP” HERE)
