US to block TikTok - ByteDance vows to fight back

Talks about a ban have finally progressed past the theoretical stage

TikTok claims a new US law, which requires owner ByteDance to divest it in nine months or a country-wide block, is unconstitutional.

President Joe Biden signed the new law into force after the US Senate voted to approve the legislation. It gives owner ByteDance nine months to divest itself of TikTok, or face a ban across the USA.

The bill itself does not ban TikTok, which could be argued to be unconstitutional. That was, in fact, the argument that successfully blocked Montana's ban of the app inside state lines in 2023. A district judge said such a ban "infringes on the Constitutional right of users and businesses" - specifically, the right to freedom of speech and expression enshrined in the First Amendment.

Rather than banning TikTok, the new law requires Chinese owner ByteDance to sell its interest. That is because of national security concerns over the company sharing data with the government in Beijing, and even surveilling US citizens.

FBI director Christopher Wray has previously said that ByteDance is "controlled by the Chinese government." He also warned that the Chinese Communist Party can influence TikTok's 170 million US users by manipulating the algorithm that curates what they view.

Senator Marco Rubio, the lead Republican on the Intelligence Committee, said, "For years we have allowed the Chinese Communist Party to control one of the most popular apps in America... That was dangerously shortsighted."

He added the new law is "a good move for America."

Will TikTok disappear?

ByteDance now has nine months to sell TikTok, with the possibility of a three month extension if it is in the middle of a sale by the time of the deadline.

If the company fails to do so, TikTok will be banned in the USA. However, it won't automatically vanish from people's devices.

Instead, the app will be removed from Apple and Google's app stores, and existing installations will no longer receive updates or fixes.

ByteDance vows to fight

ByteDance is not taking the news lying down. TikTok's head of public policy for the Americas, Michael Beckerman, wrote a memo to staff over the weekend - before Biden signed the bill - saying, "At the stage that the bill is signed, we will move to the courts for a legal challenge."

Beckerman also called the legislation "a clear violation of the First Amendment rights of the 170 million Americans on TikTok."

TikTok boss Shou Zi Chew said in a video posted to the app, "We are confident and we will keep fighting for your rights in the courts.

"The facts, and the Constitution, are on our side... rest assured, we aren't going anywhere."

TikTok itself put out a statement saying it had invested "billions of dollars" to keep US data safe.

A long process

Democratic Senator Ed Markey has told Reuters it would be hard, if not impossible, for ByteDance to divest TikTok in the timeframe given, even if it wanted to.

Such a sale would be "one of the most complicated and expensive transactions in history," requiring months - or years - of due diligence.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, which was in talks to acquire TiKTok in 2020, said the discussions were the "strangest thing" he had ever worked on.

Has anyone else banned TikTok?

The US is far from the first country to have concerns about ByteDance's data security. About 3 billion people worldwide have no access to TikTok, mostly in India and China (China has its own version of the app called Douyin, also made by ByteDance).

India banned the app in 2020, with Iran, Senegal, Nepal, Afghanistan and Somalia following suit.

Other countries have placed restrictions on TikTok on government and military devices, including the UK, Canada, Australia and the EU.

Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts have replaced the TikTok-shaped void in several of these countries.