Supreme Court rules to uphold TikTok ban, setting the stage for shutdown

He Supreme Court has upheld the law requiring China-based ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok by Sunday or face an effective ban from the popular social video application in the US.

ByteDance has so far refused to sell TikTok, meaning many American users could do so. lose access to the app this weekend. The app may still work for those who already have TikTok on their phones, although ByteDance has also threatened to shut down the app.

The Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration and upheld the Foreign Adversaries Controlled Solicitations Protection Act that the president joe biden signed in April.

Under the terms of the law, third-party Internet service providers such as Apple and Google will be penalized for supporting a ByteDance-owned TikTok after the January 19 deadline.

If Internet service providers and app store owners comply, they will remove TikTok from their respective app stores, preventing users from downloading TikTok or installing any updates necessary to make the app functional.

The fate of TikTok in the United States it is now in the hands of the president-elect donald trumpthat in December asked the Supreme Court to pause the implementation of the law and allow his administration “the opportunity to seek a political resolution of the issues at issue in the case.”

Trump will be inaugurated on Monday, one day after the deadline for the sale of TikTok. Shou Chew, CEO of TikTok is one of several technology leaders expected to attendsitting on the stand.

In December, members of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party letters sent to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, urging managers to start preparing to comply with the law and reminding them of their duties as app store operators.

Last Friday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments from lawyers representing TikTok, content creators and the US government. TikTok’s lead lawyer, Noel Francisco, argued that the law violates the First Amendment rights of the app’s 170 million American users. Meanwhile, US Attorney General Elizabeth Prelogar responded that the app’s alleged ties to the People’s Republic of China through its parent ByteDance represent a threat to national security.

After oral arguments concluded, several legal experts believed the country’s highest court appeared to be more favorable to the US government’s case over TikTok’s alleged questionable ties to the Chinese government.

Many TikTok creators have been telling their fans to find them on competing social platforms like Google’s YouTube and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, CNBC. reported. Additionally, Instagram leaders scheduled meetings after last Friday’s Supreme Court hearing to order workers to prepare for a surge of users if the court upholds the law, according to the CNBC report.

Chinese social media app and RedNote, similar to TikTok, rose to the top from Apple’s App Store on Monday, indicating that TikTok’s millions of users were looking for alternatives.

The Chinese government also weighed a contingency plan That would prompt Elon Musk to acquire TikTok’s US operations as part of several options aimed at preventing the app from being effectively banned in the US, Bloomberg News reported on Mondays. The plan was one of several the Chinese government was considering as part of broader discussions related to working with the incoming Trump White House, according to the report.

LOOK: SCOTUS hears TikTok ban case.