A majority of the conservative and liberal justices on the nine-member bench appeared skeptical of arguments by a lawyer for TikTok that forcing a sale was a violation of First Amendment free speech rights.
Signed by President Joe Biden in April, the law passed by Congress would block TikTok, which boasts 170 million American users, from US app stores and web hosting services unless ByteDance divests from the social media platform by January 19.
The US government alleges TikTok allows Beijing to collect data and spy on users and is a conduit to spread propaganda. China and ByteDance strongly deny the claims.
"This case ultimately boils down to speech," TikTok counsel Noel Francisco said during two-and-a-half hours of oral arguments. "What we're talking about is ideas. If the First Amendment means anything, it means that the government cannot restrict speech."
Several of the justices pushed back, pointing to TikTok's Chinese ownership.
"There's a good reason for saying that a foreign government, particularly an adversary, does not have free speech rights in the United States," said Justice Samuel Alito. "Why would it all change if it was simply hidden under some kind of contrived corporate structure?"
Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts raised the national security concerns behind the law -- the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
"I think Congress and the president were concerned that China was accessing information about millions of Americans, tens of millions of Americans, including teenagers, people in their 20s," Kavanaugh said.
Their concern, he added, was "that they would use that information over time to develop spies to turn people, to blackmail people, people who a generation from now will be working in the FBI or the CIA or in the State Department."
Roberts asked the lawyer for TikTok whether the court is "supposed to ignore the fact that the ultimate parent is, in fact, subject to doing intelligence work for the Chinese government?"
Francisco said Congress could have chosen other means to address its concerns such as requiring data from TikTok's US users not be allowed to be shared with anybody.
"They never even considered that most obvious alternative" of saying "you can't give it to ByteDance, you can't give it to China, you can't give it to Google, you can't give it to Amazon," he said.
- 'We go dark' -
Francisco was asked what happens after January 19 if ByteDance declines to sell TikTok.
"We go dark," he said. "Essentially the platform shuts down."
Justice Amy Coney Barrett took issue with Francisco's characterization.
"You keep saying shut down," Barrett said. "The law doesn't say TikTok has to shut down. It says ByteDance has to divest. If ByteDance divested TikTok, we wouldn't be here, right?"
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, representing the Biden administration, also raised national security concerns, calling Chinese government control of TikTok a "grave threat."
"The Chinese government could weaponize TikTok at any time to harm the United States," Prelogar said. "There is no protected First Amendment right for a foreign adversary to exploit its control over a speech platform."
The potential ban could strain US-China relations just as Donald Trump prepares to be sworn in as president on January 20.
Trump, who has 14.7 million followers on TikTok, has emerged as an unlikely ally of the platform -- in a reversal from his first term, when the Republican leader tried to ban the app.
Trump's lawyer, John Sauer, filed a brief with the Supreme Court last month asking it to pause the law, "thus permitting President Trump's incoming Administration the opportunity to pursue a political resolution of the questions at issue in the case."
In an 11th hour development on Thursday, US billionaire Frank McCourt announced that he had put together a consortium to acquire TikTok's US assets from ByteDance.
"We look forward to working with ByteDance, President-elect Trump, and the incoming administration to get this deal done," McCourt said.
AFP, among more than a dozen other fact-checking organizations, is paid by TikTok in several countries to verify videos that potentially contain false information.
A closer look at TikTok as US Supreme Court weighs its fate
Washington (AFP) Jan 10, 2025 -
The US Supreme Court on Friday will hear TikTok's appeal of a law that would force its Chinese owner to sell the video-sharing platform or shut it down in the United States.
Here's a closer look at the rise of the platform as it awaits its fate:
- Born in China -
TikTok's meteoric rise from a niche video app to a global social media powerhouse has marked one of the most significant shifts in digital entertainment since the advent of social media.
From teenage dancers to grandmothers sharing cooking tips, TikTok has demonstrated an unprecedented ability to transform ordinary users into global celebrities virtually overnight, revolutionizing the traditional path to stardom.
Originally launched in 2016 by Chinese tech company ByteDance as Douyin for the Chinese market, the international version was named TikTok and released in 2017.
It gained massive momentum after merging with Musical.ly, a lip-synching app, a year later.
- Secret sauce -
The secret sauce to the app's rapid expansion was its innovative recommendation algorithm.
Unlike other social media platforms that primarily showed content from accounts users already follow, TikTok's "For You" page served content based on viewing habits, engagement patterns and sophisticated content analysis.
This means a video from a complete unknown can reach millions of viewers if the algorithm determines it's engaging enough.
Its short-form video format has also played a role in keeping users hooked.
Initially limited to uploads of 15 seconds, this was later expanded to accommodate videos up to 10 minutes long. Uploads as long as 60 minutes are currently being tested.
YouTube (with Shorts) and Instagram (with Reels) have chased its success.
The TikTok interface of users thumb-scrolling through machine recommended content has been widely duplicated, notably on Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter).
- Influencers -
TikTok's signature feature -- the ability to easily create, edit and share videos -- quickly captured the attention of Generation Z users before spreading to broader demographics.
Its success only grew during the coronavirus pandemic with the world locked at home and desperate for entertainment and shared experience.
By 2021, TikTok had over a billion active users worldwide. It has been downloaded more than three billion times since its creation.
The platform has emerged as a powerful marketing tool and cultural catalyst.
Businesses increasingly leverage TikTok for advertising, while creators -- or influencers -- can monetize their content.
- Political suspicions -
TikTok's power to direct mass attention means its rise hasn't been without controversy, mainly for its Chinese ownership and the site's built-in unpredictability.
The platform has faced intense scrutiny from governments worldwide, particularly in the United States, over concerns about data privacy and potential ties to the Chinese government -- including accusations of spying and acting as a tool of propaganda.
In 2020, India permanently banned TikTok along with other Chinese apps citing national security concerns.
And in Romania, authorities believe an influence campaign orchestrated from Moscow through platforms including TikTok helped far-right candidate Calin Georgescu to take the lead in the first round of the nation's presidential election.
The vote must now be re-run after being cancelled by the country's Constitutional Court between the two rounds, while the European Commission has opened an investigation into TikTok's recommendation systems.
- Fears for teenagers -
Other jurisdictions have seen expressions of fears about TikTok's potential effects on young users, with accusations it funnels them into echo chambers and fails to contain illegal, violent or obscene content.
Australia notably banned access to social media for all under-16s late last year, in one of the strictest such measures anywhere in the world.
In France a group of families is taking legal action against TikTok, accusing the network of showing their children content that could have encouraged them to commit suicide.
And in late December, Venezuela fined the company $10 million for "negligence" over the deaths of three teenagers participating in a dangerous challenge spread via its platform.
TikTok last year withdrew a programme in its TikTok Lite app that rewarded users based on how much time they spent using it.
The EU Commission had opened a probe after backlash to the app's launch in France and Spain, saying it saw potential "very addictive consequences".
- Sell or be banned -
In the US, Donald Trump's first administration attempted to force a sale of TikTok's US operations to American companies.
TikTok now faces a January 19 deadline in the US to lose its Chinese ownership or be banned from app stores.
Trump has since asked the Supreme Court to delay the cutoff date as he tries to find an alternative solution.
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