The United States government has been trying to ban TikTok over national security concerns regarding its parent company, ByteDance, and its connection to the Chinese government. In March 2024, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would require ByteDance to sell TikTok to another company within six months or the app would be banned in the US. That bill has yet to be voted on in the Senate, but on April 20, 2024, the House passed another bill that would force the sale of the app, but this time ByteDance would have nine months to do so.
After the latest bill passed, TikTok’s head of public policy for the Americas, Michael Beckerman, told staff in an internal memo that the company plans to fight the bill in the courts. “At the stage that the bill is signed, we will move to the courts for a legal challenge,” he said. “We’ll continue to fight, as this legislation is a clear violation of the first amendment rights of the 170 million Americans on TikTok.”
This isn’t the first time that TikTok will end up in the courts following an attempt to ban the app in the US, either. Back in May 2023, the US government attempted to ban TikTok, but a lawsuit from the company was quickly filed and the ban was never enacted on its scheduled date.
Quite a few big names have come out against the TikTok “ban” bill since the first one passed in March, including Elon Musk. “In my opinion, TikTok should not be banned in the USA, even though such a ban may benefit the 𝕏 platform,” he said in a post on Twitter. “Doing so would be contrary to freedom of speech and expression. It is not what America stands for.”
