This is Why Tik Tok is Suing the Trump Administration

One of the biggest social media companies to take off this year has been TikTok. The widely popular app which is owned by China’s ByteDance, has 100 million users in the U.S.

The company is now suing the Trump Administration in a response to an executive order that is seeking to ban the video app from the U.S.

TikTok has argued in California federal court that the administration did not give the company a fair chance to defend itself from allegations that it poses a national security risk. The company has also claimed Trump’s executive order illegally rests on emergency powers law in ways that do not apply to TikTok.

“We far prefer constructive dialogue over litigation,” TikTok wrote in a blog post. “But with the Executive Order threatening to bring a ban on our US operations — eliminating the creation of 10,000 American jobs and irreparably harming the millions of Americans who turn to this app for entertainment, connection, and legitimate livelihoods that are vital especially during the pandemic — we simply have no choice.”

The U.S. has given TikTok until September 20th to address concerns that the app could “allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for
blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”

The company has said that it stores data on its US users in the U.S. and in Singapore and that it would be refusing any request for US user data by the Chinese government.

“The President’s actions clearly reflect a political decision to campaign on an anti-China platform,” TikTok’s said in its complaint.

The also alleges that Trump’s justification for his executive order relies on the same emergency powers law that he cited in an earlier executive order targeting Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant. Tiktok has said that it is nothing like Huawei.

“TikTok Inc. is not a telecommunications provider and it does not provide the types of technology and services contemplated by the 2019 executive order,” the complaint said.