Federal court upholds TikTok ban despite opposition
China DailyWASHINGTON — A US federal appeals court on Friday upheld a law mandating that ByteDance sell the widely used social media app TikTok or face a potential ban in the United States, despite widespread opposition. A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, dismissed TikTok's claim that the ban is unconstitutional and infringes on the First Amendment rights of the 170 million people in the United States who use the app. "Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people," TikTok said in a statement on X. Gary Clyde Hufbauer, a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, noted that National Security adviser Jake Sullivan previously promised that US restrictions on direct commerce with China would be confined to limiting the flow of advanced technologies with "a small yard and a high fence".