On Monday (16), TikTok and ByteDance tried to argue against the United States legislation that bans the platform from the country. The hearing took place between the lawyers of the platform and its owner and the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
The meeting lasted about 2 hours, according to Reuters. At the hearing, TikTok's defense raised arguments against the new legislation and the impossibility of meeting all government demands.
TikTok and ByteDance attorney Andrew Pincus says the new law violates the U.S. Constitution on multiple levels, including the First Amendment. In this excerpt, it is established that Congress cannot implement laws that limit the freedom of expression of the population.
“The law before this court is unprecedented and its effects could be staggering,” Pincus said. “For the first time in history, Congress has expressly targeted a specific American speaker and banned his speech and the speech of 170 million Americans.”
Sanctioned by US President Joe Biden in April of this year, the new United States law determines that the ByteDance to sell platform to US company by January 2025. Otherwise, the platform may be suspended in the country.
TikTok's source code is huge
In contrast, US Department of Justice advocate Daniel Tenny, defended the congress' decisionmentioning that ByteDance's control poses a risk to national security. The Chinese company has access to a vast amount of personal data of Americans, and this would allow China to manipulate information through the app.
“It is a farce to suggest that with these two billion lines of code, 40 times more than the entire Windows operating system and changed 1,000 times a day, that we are somehow going to detect that they (China and ByteDance) have changed anything,” the lawyer said. “There is a lot going on in China outside of the control of the United States that puts our national security at great risk.”
In the view of one of the judges of the Court of Appeal, Neomi Rao, the estimated time to analyze TikTok code would be three yearsnot counting the updates. He mentions that ByteDance's defense seeks to place Congress as an agency of the executive branch, not one of the branches of government.
The imminent ban on TikTok has become an issue for US presidential candidates. Donald Trump, former president and now presidential candidate, has an active profile on the social network and supports the network's continued presence in the US.