Today, at 10 AM EST, the US Supreme Court will hear an oral argument over a law that could ban Tiktok. This may decide whether the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, the law that bans online applications from targeting, surveilling, and manipulating American people, violates the U.S. Constitution’s free speech protections.
However, it remains unclear when the Supreme Court will issue the ruling. If the decision in TikTok’s favor does not come by January 19, the application may be banned, affecting 115 million US monthly active users and several marketers, advertisers, and influencers who use the application to generate revenue. They either have to transfer to other platforms, like YouTube or Instagram, or hope that Chinese app owner ByteDance will divert the app to an American company.
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley Law, stated that since the US has so many active users, shutting TikTok down will lead to “enormous implications”. He also added that this is tension between free speech issues and claims of national security as some politicians view the app as a tool for espionage or a weapon for covert influence operations.
