On July 28, the director of Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute posted a US Justice Department document on social media related to TikTok’s legal challenge against the company’s potential ban in the United States.
“The Biden admin has finally told the DC Circuit why Americans can’t have access to TikTok,” wrote Jameel Jaffer, on X, formerly Twitter.
The post comprised a page from a brief submitted to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, entirely obscured by black marking and unreadable.
In a subsequent post, Jaffer quipped: “To be fair, not all of the brief is redacted. But the parts that aren’t redacted are no more persuasive than the parts that are.”
The disclosure came months after the US Congress and President Joe Biden…
The House of Representatives by a wide margin passed a bill that would make it illegal to distribute or host TikTok in the U.S. — effectively blocking it from some 170 million American users — unless Chinese owner ByteDance divests its interest in the popular app.
It’s the first time a congressional bill has passed that would outlaw an internet app. The fears among many American lawmakers, who see TikTok as a national security threat: that the Chinese regime could demand access to data on TikTok’s U.S. users or somehow compel it to promote China’s agenda. TikTok has repeatedly claimed the Chinese government has never made such demands (and that TikTok would not comply with them if they were made).
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