A trial against TikTok begins in the United States: they seek to “expel” it

WASHINGTON (EFE).— The popular social network TikTok faced a law this Monday in court that would force it to disappear from the United States next January, in an attempt to maintain its presence in the national market, where it has 170 million of users.

A three-judge panel of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals began oral arguments to consider the lawsuit that TikTok and its Chinese parent ByteDance filed in May to prevent a law from taking effect.

That legislation, passed by Congress in April, would force TikTok to separate from its parent company in China or be banned in the United States.

Specifically, the text gave ByteDance nine months (until January 19) to find an investor from a country that is not considered an “adversary” of the United States to sell its operations in the North American nation.

Otherwise, the application would have to stop operating in the country.

Joe Biden’s government and congressmen from the Democratic and Republican parties fear that the Chinese government could obtain information about users in the United States from ByteDance and use its influence over American public opinion by manipulating what users see on the application.

However, in today’s hearing, the lawyer representing TikTok, Andrew Pincus, stated that this social network is committed to protecting the data of its users and that the United States government has not demonstrated that the application poses a risk to its national security.

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