TikTok's future in the US is hanging by a thread after a court refused to stop a law that could ban the app unless it separates from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance.
The law, which goes into effect on January 19, gave ByteDance nine months to sell TikTok to the US.
If they don't, the app will be removed from US app stores and web-hosting services.
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However, the president could grant a 90-day extension if a sale is in progress.
“The Act will shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration," TikTok wrote.
"This, in turn, will silence the speech of Applicants and the many Americans who use the platform to communicate about politics, commerce, arts, and other matters of public concern."
According to experts, TikTok has a few options to avoid the ban.
First, the video-sharing platform could request intervention from the Supreme Court or hope that the Trump administration in January could choose not to enforce the ban.
Yesterday (Monday 16 December), TikTok and ByteDance filed for an emergency injunction to the Supreme Court to try and postpone the ruling, with TikTok arguing that the case was 'utterly antithetical to the First Amendment.'
A last-minute sale or Congress repealing the law could also fight the ban but both seem far less likely at this point, according to CNBC.
"If the Act is allowed to take effect in January 2025 … this Court will lose its ability to grant applicants meaningful relief," lawyers for TikTok and ByteDance wrote.
"Even a temporary shutdown of TikTok will cause permanent harm to applicants — a representative group of Americans who use TikTok to speak, associate, and listen — as well as the public at large."
The US government argues that TikTok is 'a national-security threat of immense depth and scale' because the Chinese government can use it to collect data on its 170 million US users and influence what content they see.
Not to mention, the Chinese government is opposed to selling TikTok's algorithm. Therefore, any new buyer would be forced to rebuild it from scratch which is no small task.
The panel of judges from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed, which is why TikTok’s request to pause the ban was denied.
TikTok has asked the Supreme Court to make a decision on its request by January 6.
Whilst the app said a sale is not an option right now, as per CNBC, the pause would give them enough time to 'coordinate with their service providers to perform the complex task of shutting down the TikTok platform only in the United States.'