ByteDance, TikTok seek temporary halt to US crackdown law
Al Jazeera
The companies have asked an appeals court to temporarily block the law that would enforce a ban on the app in the United States.
China-based ByteDance and its short-video app TikTok have asked an appeals court to temporarily block a law that would require that parent company ByteDance divest TikTok by January 19 or face a ban, pending a review by the United States Supreme Court.
The companies filed the emergency motion on Monday with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, warning that without the order the law will take effect and will “shut down TikTok—one of the nation’s most popular speech platforms—for its more than 170 million domestic monthly users on the eve of a presidential inauguration”.
Without the injunction, TikTok could be banned in the US in six weeks, making the company far less valuable to ByteDance and its investors, and slamming the businesses that depend on TikTok to drive their sales.
On Friday, a three-judge panel of the appeals court upheld the law requiring ByteDance to divest TikTok in the US by early next year or face a ban in just six weeks.
Lawyers for the companies said the prospect the Supreme Court will take the case “and reverse is sufficiently high to warrant the temporary pause needed to create time for further deliberation”.
