Tiktok Files Lawsuit In Federal Court Challenging The Ban Imposed By The US Government
Image Credit – Economic Times
The Chinese video-sharing app TikTok announced on Monday that it is suing the US government for their decision to ban the platform accusing it of being a threat to national security.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order that instructs Americans to stop doing business with the Chinese-owned platform within the next 45 days. This order sets a deadline for the parent company ByteDance to sell the app to an American company.
The company announced in their blog post that they have filed a lawsuit in the federal court challenging this decision made by the US administration.
The company expressed in the lawsuit that they feel Trump’s order to ban the app is unfair and goes against the International Emergency Economic Powers Act because their video sharing platform is not in any way ‘an unusual and extraordinary threat.’
The lawsuit explains that the order is likely to ‘strip the rights of that community without any evidence to justify such an extreme action.’
TikTok feels that the administration ignored their massive efforts to address its concerns about national security which they did in good faith even if there were disagreement.
The wide-ranging video-sharing app has more than 175 million downloads alone in the US and more than a billion downloads worldwide.
The company has denied every allegation made by the Trump administration such as tracking the locations of federal employees, building dossiers on people for blackmail, and carry out corporate surveillance for China.
The Chinese government called Trump’s decision as purely political as the US election is going to be held in November this year and Trump’s main focus is this anti-Beijing message in his campaign against his rival Joe Bidden.
TikTok claims that the administration failed to produce any evidence against the company on the accusations. And they believe that the decision was made based purely on political agenda.
Recently Trump has been trying to counter China in every aspect such as trade, military, and economic fronts.
After their showdown with TikTok, The US has imposed sanctions on Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam over the crackdown on last year’s democracy demonstrations.
Microsoft and Oracle are the possible candidates to take over TikTok’s US operations.
Oracle is likely to bid for TikTok’s operations in the US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Most interestingly their chairman Larry Ellison raised millions in campaign funds for Trump this year.
ByteDance has got 90 days to sell its US operations to an American company before the app gets banned.
This move is completely against America’s long-promoted stands on the global and open internet and could inspire other countries to do the same.
Milton Mueller, a Georgia Tech professor and founder of the Internet Governance Project said that this is a calculated move to ‘fragment the internet and the global information society along US and Chinese lines, and shut China out of the information economy.’
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