Appeal In Court, TikTok Denies US Claims On Link To China

TikTok menyatakan kepada pengadilan appellatan federal (foto: dok.tiktok)

JAKARTA - TikTok declared to the federal appeals court on Thursday that the US Department of Justice had misstated the relationship between this social media app and China, and asked the court to overturn a law requiring ByteDance, China-based parent company TikTok, to sell TikTok assets in the US or face bans.

TikTok, which sued to overturn the law, said the Justice Department had made factual errors in this case. The department's lawyers last month stated that the app poses a national security risk by allowing the Chinese government to collect American citizen data and secretly manipulate the content they see.

TikTok on Thursday 15 August stated that no one debated that the application's content recommendation machine and user data were stored in the US on the cloud server operated by Oracle, and content moderation decisions affecting users in the US were made in the US.

The law signed by President Joe Biden on April 24 gave ByteDance until January 19 to sell TikTok or face bans. The White House said it wanted to see Chinese-based holdings end on national security grounds, but not a ban on TikTok.

The appeals court will hold verbal arguments about the legal challenge on September 16, which puts the fate of TikTok in the final weeks before the presidential election on November 5.

TikTok argues that the law will revoke the company's right to freedom of speech, opposing the Justice Department's claim that the short video app's content curation decision is "foreign convicts" and is not protected by the US Constitution.

"According to government logic, a US newspaper re-publicing content from foreign publications - Reuters, for example - will not get constitutional protection," the company said.

The law prohibits app stores like Apple and Alphabet's Google from offering TikTok and prohibits internet hosting services from supporting TikTok unless the app is released by ByteDance.

Motivated by concerns among US lawmakers that China could access data on Americans or spy on them with the app, Congress massively authorized this action just weeks after its introduction.