A Supreme Court hearing on Friday between TikTok and its parent company ByteDance will decide whether the well-known app stays under Chinese control or not. The hearing will assess whether a federal statute President Joe Biden signed—mandating divestiture of TikTok—is constitutional.
Set to go live on January 19, the rule essentially forbids the app unless ByteDance sells it to an owner unrelated to China, North Korea, Russia, or Iran. A decision upholding the ban might help American social media rivals like Meta (META, Financial), since advertising money might move to sites like Instagram and Facebook. Microsoft (MSFT) and Oracle (ORCL) surfaced as possible the top tech giant's potentially scoopung up the stock.
With ramifications for TikTok's 170 million U.S. users, particularly small business owners who depend on the app, the case begs issues of Congress's authority to give national security top priority above free expression Legal experts advise creators worried about losing their material to backup their work since intellectual property rights would still belong to them but might be unreachable should TikTock be closed.
Complicating matters, President-elect Donald Trump has asked the court to postpone the execution of the law and take into account a negotiated settlement, therefore indicating his readiness to approach the matter differently once in office.
