The closure of TikTok in the US is inevitable, warns the lawyer of the social network

Noel Francisco, who was also US attorney general during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term, opened the hearing as TikTok’s legal representative and reiterated Trump’s desire for the court to end the effective ban to give him time for the president-elect to find a political solution to national security concerns with occasion of TikTok.

Separately, Francisco argued that TikTok For You’s algorithm should be protected by free speech rights because it represents the company’s editorial opinion regarding the content it distributes.

Responding to​​​​a question whether the problem is the law of the sale or the ban in a limited time to get rid of the social network, the lawyer argued that it would be impossible to get rid of the application at any time.

Given this fact, TikTok has consistently argued that a sale is impossible because China will prevent the export of its algorithm. Francisco also stated that TikTok would be a fundamentally different service if it did not have access to content from global creators. In addition, he claimed that the new version of TikTok in the United States with the new algorithm prohibits any type of coordination with ByteDance’s global engineering team and that the new version will have completely different content.

During the hearing, the judges peppered Francis with questions about TikTok’s ties to Chinese company ByteDance, as much of the court’s investigation focused on TikTok’s ownership structure.

As US Attorney General Elizabeth Prelogar has pointed out, at the moment, most of the arguments in favor of legalizing TikTok claim that it poses a threat to national security.

Americans who use TikTok may believe that “they are talking to each other,” Prelogar said. But in reality, “the People’s Republic of China, a foreign adversary country, is exploiting a vulnerability in the system.”

The judges asked Prelagar how TikTok differs from other foreign-owned outlets, such as Politico and Oxford University Press, and she noted that they are owned by China, “a foreign adversary looking for any opportunity to weaken the United States.” she said. “If he controls TikTok, it’s hard to predict exactly how he will use it as a tool to harm our interests.”

“What we’re trying to avoid is not a specific problem, specific points of view, but the technical ability of a foreign adversary country to use a communication channel,” Prelogar continued.

As for whether the incoming Trump administration could extend the deadline for the legislation, Prelogar said the US government has not yet taken a position on the matter.

“We haven’t looked at it in depth, in part because it’s just not represented here,” he said. It should be recalled that Trump will take office on January 20, and the deadline for refusal is January 19.

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