TikTok And ByteDance Urge US Courts To Cancel The Divestment Law

TikTok and ByteDance reject the US divestment law (photo: dock. Pixabay)

JAKARTA TikTok and ByteDance, its parent company, urged the US court to cancel the divestment law on Thursday, June 20. If left unchecked, the TikTok app will be closed in the US. In April, US President Joe Biden signed a divestment bill to separate TikTok from ByteDance. This was deliberately done because the government was afraid that TikTok users' data in the US could be accessed by the Chinese government. ByteDance strongly rejects the push for this divestment. Reporting from Reuters, ByteDance said that divestment is unlikely to be carried out, either technologically, commercially, or legally. Therefore, ByteDance and TikTok are trying to go against its rules. "This law represents a radical change in the country's tradition of fighting the open Internet, and becomes a dangerous precedent that allows political branches to target platforms of speech that are disfavored and force them to sell or close them," said TikTok and ByteDance. TikTok also said that this divestment rule does not reflect on the actual situation because the process could take years. This law is also unfair because it only targets TikTok and ByteDance. "(the government) ignores many applications with large operations in China that collect large amounts of US user data, as well as many US companies that develop software and employ engineers in China," TikTok said.

Meanwhile, ByteDance revealed that it had been negotiating very long with the US government. However, negotiations were abruptly discontinued in August 2022 and the government chose to forcibly separate TikTok from ByteDance. In fact, ByteDance has made a 100-page national security agreement and has been edited to protect TikTok user data in the US. The company has also spent more than $2 billion to maintain its commitment. "The government has chosen to try to close TikTok in the United States and remove speech platforms for 170 million Americans, rather than continuing to seek practical, feasible, and effective solutions to protect users in America," TikTok's lawyers told the Justice Department some time ago.