On Monday, TikTok asked the US Supreme Court to act urgently to stop a federal law that could ban the popular platform in the country unless its parent company in China agrees to sell it.
Lawyers for the company and China-based ByteDance urged judges to intervene before the Jan. 19 deadline set by law expires. Content creators who rely on the platform for income and some of TikTok’s more than 170 million U.S. users filed a similar request.
“A modest delay in the implementation of the law will create room for this Court to conduct an orderly review and the new administration to evaluate this matter, before this vital channel for Americans to communicate with their fellow Americans and the world is shut down. “, lawyers for the companies told the Supreme Court.
The elected president Donald Trump, who once supported a ban but then promised in his campaign to “save TikTok,” He said his government will examine the situation.
“As you know, I have a special place in my heart for TikTok,” Trump declared during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. His campaign saw the platform as a way to reach younger, less politically engaged voters.
Trump met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, according to two people familiar with the president-elect’s plans who were not authorized to speak publicly about them and spoke to The Associated Press at condition of anonymity.
The companies have said that A shutdown of just one month would cause TikTok to lose about a third of its daily users in the United States and significant advertising revenue.
On Friday, a panel of federal judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied an emergency request to block the law, a procedural ruling that allowed the case to advance to the Supreme Court.
If the country’s highest court does not order a freeze, the law would take effect on January 19 and expose the app stores that offer TikTok and the internet hosting services that support it to possible fines.
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