Sep 21, 2024

How the first hearing in the trial on the possible blocking of TikTok in the United States went 0 comments The next president of the United States, whether it’s Kamala Harris or Donald Trumpwill be sworn in, and therefore will actually take office, on January 20. The day before, January 19, 2025, is the deadline by which TikTok must sell its US operations to an American company in order not to be banned in the United States. In those days, as established, the president has the power to grant a few months of extension to find a potential buyer. It is not clear at this time whether this will happen and who will have to decide?. Nor is it really clear what those who are called to decide think, because neither Harris nor Trump have taken a position on the possible blocking of TikTok in the United States. Better said: they haven’t (yet?) said it clearly during this election campaignalthough we know a little about how they think. Or at least we should know: Harris made a lot of use, very intense TikTok to increase their popularity and seek consensus and support among the younger generation, therefore for consistency should not be favorable to a block of the platform; Trump, who was in favor of it at the time of his presidency, recently backtracked, saying among other things that blocking TikTok “would be a favor to Facebook”. Social network Exclusive: What’s in TikTok’s 70-page appeal against the law that could block it in the US by Emanuele Capone TikTok: Freedom of Speech or Security Risks Meanwhile, the Americans (are over 170 million TikTok users in the US) seem less and less in favor of banning the app: according to a recent Pew Research Center survey (This) found that support for the bloc has fallen from 50% in March 2023 to just over 30% last month, while those who clearly oppose it are now almost 30%. In all this, the first hearing of the trial was held yesterday in Washington, which sees the Department of Justice on one side and the lawyers of TikTok and a group of US creators who obviously oppose the measure on the other: in front of the 3 judges Sri Srinivasan (president of the college, appointed by Obama), Neomi Rao (appointed by Trump) and Douglas Ginsburg (which was even chosen by Reagan) we will have to try to understand whether the law signed by Biden specifically targets TikTok and is therefore in some way ad personam and if you violate the First Amendment to the Constitutionthat which protects freedom of expression and speech. The feeling, according to many American press outlets, is that this first day has not gone very well for TikTok, with Justices Rao and Ginsburg who seemed more welcoming to the Justice Department’s arguments and more bored by those of ByteDance. In particular, Ginsburg noted that the provision would not be aimed at hitting TikTok but instead would be aimed at companies “controlled by foreign adversaries” that operate on American soil. To this observation, the lawyer Jeffrey Fisher (who is part of the defense team of the creators) noted that if this were the case, then this law could end up to target other companies operating in the United States but controlled by foreign capitallike Politico, Spotify and even the BBC. As you can understand, the feeling is that the road is still long (here all the details on the forces in the field ) and that to reach a final decision the judges will have to establish not only whether that of express yourself through TikTok (and social media in general) is a right protected by the First Amendment but whether that right outweighs any potential national security risks posed by TikTok. Suspected and never provenamong other things.