Donald T. loves TikTok

On November 12, US President-elect Donald Trump said, “I’m going to save TikTok.” In German: “I will save TikTok.” TikTok is now using this as one of its arguments in an urgent application to the US Supreme Court. According to the application, the Supreme Court should declare the legal TikTok ban unconstitutional, which is scheduled to take effect on January 19, 2025 – the day before Donald Trump takes office as US President.

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On Monday, Trump said: “I have a warm place in my heart for TikTok.” In German: “There’s a stone in TikTok’s board.” This is a sharp contrast to his approach as US President four years ago. At that time, Trump had ordered a ban on TikTok and WeChat, which was later lifted by his successor Joe Biden. But then the US legislature swung into action: both US parties jointly passed a law banning TikTok with a clear majority.

TikTok is fighting against this law in court, but till now it has not been successful. According to law, TikTok is banned in D.C. This required it to go directly to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals for the Capital District, which the company did and lost. The law prevents general appeal. However, the appeals court, which is responsible at first and last instance, said it acted particularly swiftly to enable TikTok to submit an urgent application to the Supreme Court. However, the court refused to grant an adjournment. Therefore, TikTok is now trying to the US Supreme Court, however, TikTok has no legal right to a hearing there; The Supreme Court actually accepts only a fraction of all applications for hearing.

Urgent application for postponement

Monday’s urgent application is aimed at initially obtaining an adjournment to avoid any setbacks. If the Supreme Court grants an adjournment, the Supreme Court judge can calmly think about whether he wants to take up the case. And meanwhile, this issue is no longer urgent, because Trump recently decided not to ban the video service, but to protect it.

It’s easy to explain why Trump now claims to be in the ring for the Chinese company: He believes he won the poll among young Americans in November over his main presidential rival Kamala Harris by 34 percentage points. is really Harris according to pollsters Won this group by six percentage points.

Suspicion of election manipulation: EU action against TikTok

Facts do not challenge Trump. He has declared the American service Facebook an enemy of the people because it temporarily blocked Trump’s account after the coup attempt in early 2021. And because Trump believes that the youth whom he considers his fans love TikTok, he now wants to save this platform. TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance don’t care, public support is a good argument in the Supreme Court.

Although Trump, as US President, cannot repeal the law on his own, he can extend the deadline by up to 90 days under certain conditions. Above all, he has influence over the officers who must enforce the law. The new president may publicly urge his justice minister and top prosecutor to allow TikTok to use US service providers. If they trust the authorities to shut down all the corns, TikTok will continue to operate as usual despite the legal ban.

TikTok: “The law is unconstitutional on several occasions”

“It would not be in anyone’s interest (-) neither the parties to the dispute, nor the public, nor the courts (-) if a legal ban on TikTok goes into effect before the government implements it a few hours, days or weeks later, ” TikTok writes to the Supreme Court Of course, the company is making even stronger legal arguments. The service is used by 170 million Americans who use it to express themselves publicly. The First Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, which is why the ban is unconstitutional. Neither the law nor the government has shown how TikTok content is being manipulated from China.

Moreover, the disparate treatment occurs because the law explicitly excludes other applications from the ban – and TikTok surprisingly believes that these competitors pose at least a greater threat to US national security. Since TikTok and ByteDance are mentioned by name in the law, this constitutes condemnation by law and expropriation without compensation – both of which are explicitly prohibited by the US Constitution. and will in general be more generous means of achieving the goals of the law than restrictions. The closure of operations in the United States would cause irreparable harm to ByteDance.

In long-term cooperation with the US authority CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States), TikTok has developed a plan to address national security concerns. The intended measures include a supervisory body that monitors US users’ data, whose members would have to be approved by the US government. According to TikTok, the agreement was supposed to protect US users from foreign influence on moderation, algorithms and source code. The company claims that it has already started implementing some measures and has spent more than US$2 billion on them. But CFIUS stopped cooperating and the legislature passed the ban.

put option is hypothetical

Theoretically, the law has a way out: ByteDance would have to sell TikTok to a US buyer within the next five weeks, but would then not be allowed to share any data with the sold company and algorithms for recommending content. There will be no cooperation with. This algorithm is considered the secret recipe of TikTok’s success. The People’s Republic of China has already banned its export, so ByteDance cannot sell it to a US buyer. TikTok has no value without the algorithm.

The legally required separation of content into “American” and “Other” would reduce this residual value to zero, especially since American users prefer to consume foreign short videos. ByteDance says that in general, it will be impossible to sell within the stipulated period. Without Chinese programmers no one could understand and use the extensive source code. This means that the sale is not only legally and economically impossible, but also technically impossible.

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Brian Firebaugh vs. Merrick B. GarlandReference 24A588.

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