TikTok rejects US allegations about ties to China
Recently, TikTok has officially spoken out strongly against US accusations about the relationship between the platform and the Chinese government.
Accordingly, on August 15, TikTok strongly objected to the baseless accusations of the US Department of Justice, claiming that the agency had distorted the truth to oppose this short video platform. Currently, TikTok is trying every way to protect its legitimate rights.
In the ongoing lawsuit, TikTok asserts that the evidence presented by the US Department of Justice to prove the national security risk is unconvincing and lacks legal basis.
Meanwhile, lawyers for the US Department of Justice argue that the app poses a national security risk by allowing the Chinese government to collect Americans' data and secretly manipulate the content they see.
Contrary to the allegations from the US Department of Justice, TikTok asserts that all activities related to content recommendations and user data storage of the application in the US are carried out completely independently and transparently, under the management of the US company Oracle. Content moderation decisions are also made in the US, ensuring compliance with local laws.
Previously, on April 24, President Biden signed a law requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok by January 19, otherwise the application will be banned in the US. The White House emphasized that this decision is to ensure national security, and at the same time wants to find an alternative solution other than completely banning TikTok.
TikTok’s fate is set to be decided in court on September 16. The trial is not only of great legal significance, but also has a direct impact on the lives of millions of American users and could influence the outcome of the upcoming presidential election.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump joined TikTok and said in June that he would never support a TikTok ban. Meanwhile, Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris also joined TikTok in July and has been using the social media as part of her campaign strategy.
The legal battle between TikTok and the US Department of Justice is getting more and more intense. TikTok has warned that the new bill will set a dangerous precedent, threatening freedom of expression on the social media platform. In response, the US Department of Justice asserted that TikTok's content decisions are just "foreign speech" and are not protected by the US Constitution. This controversy is attracting great attention from the public and legal experts.
“By this logic, if an American newspaper republishes news from Reuters, their press freedom would be similarly restricted, which is clearly unreasonable and contrary to basic constitutional principles,” TikTok warned.
To continue operating in the US market, ByteDance will be forced to divest from TikTok, otherwise major app stores like Apple and Google will have to remove this application from their app stores, and cloud storage services will also stop supporting it.
Amid growing concerns that the Chinese government could use TikTok to collect data on American users, Congress quickly passed legislation to ban the app by an overwhelming vote just weeks after it was introduced.
