TikTok sues US government over threatened ban | Tech

If ByteDance does not sell TikTok to an American party within a year, the app will be banned in the US. In that case, TikTok may no longer be offered by app stores.

ByteDance says the new rules do not comply with the US Constitution. According to ByteDance and TikTok, it is simply not possible to continue operations in the US. “There is no doubt,” the companies say. “The law forces a shutdown. It silences 170 million Americans.”

Even if it were possible to sell the American branch of TikTok, ByteDance and TikTok see this as an “extraordinary and unconstitutional exercise of power”. It would cut Americans off from the rest of the world. And that is an outcome that is fundamentally at odds with the freedom of expression and individual freedoms of users, they say.

Many Western countries are afraid that Chinese authorities are abusing TikTok to collect user data. For that reason, US and European Commission officials are not allowed to install TikTok on work phones. There is no ban in the Netherlands, although the government did call on civil servants last year to keep TikTok off their work phones.