The social network TikTok has filed a lawsuit against the United States Government this Tuesday after the approval of a bill that will allow the platform to be nationally banned if its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, does not disassociate itself from it.
The lawsuit has been filed before the Washington Circuit Court of Appeals, and it alleges that the measure represents a violation of constitutional provisions regarding freedom of expression, as published by the NBC News television network.
“For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single self-named communications platform to a permanent nationwide ban and prevents all Americans from participating in a single online community with more than 1,000 million users around the world,” reads the document presented by the company.
Furthermore, it has argued that invoking national security concerns is not a sufficient reason to “restrict” free speech.
Following the approval of the legislation amid the belief that the Chinese government could use the application to spread propaganda among the 170 million American users, ByteDance indicated its intention to exhaust all legal remedies before considering any type of divestment if the ban on TikTok becomes law.
