Trump led the charge to shut down TikTok. Now he says he will keep it Technology

As United States President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House, TikTok may be in line for a reprieve from the leader who led the charge to block the embattled video-sharing platform.

Under a law signed by US President Joe Biden in April, ByteDance, the Chinese owner of the most popular app, was given nine months to divest its stake in the company or face a ban on national security grounds.

The sales deadline – January 19 – is the day before Trump’s inauguration.

On the campaign trail, Trump, who signed an executive order seeking to shut down the app during his first term, promised to “save TikTok” but neither he nor his transition team revealed any details about what this might mean for ByteDance.

The president-elect may have more options, though he may not be able to change the law that enforces the ban on his own, according to legal experts.

Originally passed in the US House of Representatives as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Enemy Controlled Requests Act, a shortened version of the ban was included in a Senate bill authorizing foreign aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan.

Shortly after it was signed into law, ByteDance filed a lawsuit arguing that the ban violated the free speech rights of the app’s 170 million American users.

“For the first time in history, Congress has enacted legislation that puts a single, branded speech platform on permanent, nationwide ban, and prevents every American from participating in the unique online community of more than one billion people worldwide,” the company said. said in the case.

ByteDance did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

The case is expected to take years to complete and is further complicated by the fact that the ban will involve the collaboration of Google and Apple, which offer TikTok in their application stores, and Oracle, which owns the application in the US.

Anupam Chander, an expert in global technology law at Georgetown Law in Washington, DC, said Trump could ask the US Congress to give him the power to negotiate a separate plan with ByteDance and TikTok that addresses security issues.

“I think a lot of politicians would like TikTok not to be blacked out in the US in January. After all, about 170 million Americans continue to use this app, even after the government told them it was a national security risk,” Chander told Al Jazeera.

“And yes, even if TikTok goes out of business for a while because TikTok owners won’t sell at a fire sale price, Trump can get Congress to change the law to bring it back.”

David Greene, civil liberties director of the US-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), said Trump could also order the US Justice Department to drop or change its defense in the ByteDance case or order the US Commerce Department not to enforce the law. the law.

The next president could also choose to do nothing and let the ban stand, Greene said.

“There’s a good chance he’s still not sticking to his ‘I’m going to unban TikTok’ comment because he often changes his mind about these things or is talked into changing his mind,” Greene told Al. Jazeera.

“You may remember that he was the one who issued the first ban on TikTok. He did it by executive order [in 2020]which was overturned by the courts, but he strongly believed that TikTok posed a threat to national security,” he added.

The EFF was one of the many organizations fighting for freedom and freedom of speech that opposed the ban on TikTok, saying that it is not a bigger threat than other social media platforms.

Critics of the TikTok ban also say that instead of targeting a single social media company, the US needs data protection laws similar to those passed by the European Union.

Much of the concern about TikTok centers on its Chinese ownership and fears that Beijing could use the app to harvest data from millions of Americans or find a backdoor into their devices.

Proponents of the ban also say Beijing could use the platform to carry out influence campaigns aimed at subverting American democracy.

US-based apps, however, are also able to harvest large amounts of user data, which they can sell to data brokers and pass on to intelligence agencies and other buyers.

ByteDance has tried to sway US lawmakers with its $1.5bn “Project Texas”, which created a US subsidiary dedicated to managing American data on US soil with the help of US technology company Oracle.

Despite the approval, many US officials remain in favor of the program and its Chinese ownership amid a growing bipartisan consensus that Beijing is a threat.

TikTok is already banned or banned in many countries, including Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Somalia, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.

Restrictions also exist in the US for government employees and agencies in individual US states.

Despite the threat of a US ban, the sale of TikTok seemed impossible to many viewers from the beginning because it would mean giving access to the application’s secret – and some argue, addictive – algorithm.

It is unclear whether Beijing would allow such sales to continue.