WASHINGTON: China-based ByteDance and its short-video app TikTok on Monday (Dec 9) asked an appeals court to temporarily block a law that would require that parent company ByteDance divest TikTok by Jan 19 or face a ban, pending a review by the US Supreme Court.
The companies filed the emergency motion with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, warning that without the order the law would take effect and would “shut down TikTok – one of the nation’s most popular speech platforms – for its more than 170 million domestic monthly users on the eve of a presidential inauguration.”
Without the injunction, TikTok could be banned in the US in six weeks, making the company far less valuable to ByteDance and its investors, and slamming the businesses that depend on TikTok to drive their sales.
