• Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of TikTok, stated today that the company anticipates winning a legal challenge to stop legislation that President Joe Biden signed into law, saying it would outlaw the well-known short video app that is used by 170 million Americans.
  • TikTok said the new law is unconstitutional and confirmed that it will challenge it in US courts.
  • China’s government, meanwhile, has expressed strong opposition to a forced sale of TikTok.

CEO of TikTok Shou Zi Chew says the company will fight a recently passed US law that mandates the platform be sold off by its Chinese parent company ByteDance or face being blocked in the US. He also cautions that lawmakers’ real intention is to simply forbid access to the service altogether rather than requiring a change in ownership.

TikTok’s actions on American ban

Following a protracted period of wrangling, the US Congress passed a bill in March mandating the sale or blocking of TikTok. The bill was then sent to the Senate, which voted on it on April 22. US President Joe Biden signed the bill into law one day later.

TikTok declared that the new law is unconstitutional in a statement that was uploaded to Twitter, and it confirmed that it will contest it in US courts. “The truth is, we have made billion-dollar investments to safeguard US data and ensure that outside influence and manipulation do not affect our platform,” TikTok stated. “170 million Americans would be silenced and seven million businesses would be destroyed by this ban.

“We will keep investing and innovating to ensure TikTok remains a place where Americans of all walks of life can safely come to share their experiences, find joy, and be inspired, even as we continue to challenge this unconstitutional ban.”

Similar sentiments were expressed by Shou in a TikTok video, wherein she asserted that some US lawmakers wanted to completely ban the platform, which would likely have a more frightening effect on its users, rather than cut off China from TikTok.

Shou said in the video: “Rest assured—we aren’t going anywhere. The facts and the Constitution are on our side, and we expect to prevail again.”

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Despite the president signing the bill into law, what happens next remains to be seen. Organizations including the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, and PEN America have spoken out against the law, saying it will “violate the First Amendment rights of Americans across the country” and “set an alarming global precedent for excessive government control over social media platforms.”

Complicating matters could be Donald Trump’s possible election to the US presidency: Trump has come out strongly against the proposal, despite his attempt to impose his ban on TikTok in 2020. He may attempt to weaken or repeal this new law.

China’s government, meanwhile, has expressed strong opposition to a forced sale of TikTok, which leaves ByteDance little room to manoeuvre. But TikTok must take action: other Western nations, such as the UK, Australia, and Canada, are thinking about banning TikTok as well, and they will most likely follow the US’s lead.