The law banning Tiktok in the United States is coming into force on Sunday.
17:14•Updated 17:48
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a law that bans the social platform Tiktok from operating in the U.S. unless its Chinese parent company Bytedance sells it by Sunday.
The Supreme Court’s decision was unanimous. According to the court, the ban does not violate freedom of speech.
The US Congress enacted the law because it fears the popular social video platform is a security risk. According to the AP news agency, Tiktok has 170 million users in the United States.
A demand for a sale to, for example, a US buyer does not seem likely, at least in the near future.
According to experts, the application will not disappear from users’ phones anywhere on Sunday, when the law enters into force. However, new users cannot download the application and old users will not receive updates to it.
The decision is in the hands of the Trump administration
Future President of the United States Donald Trump has said he plans to push for a negotiated deal on Tiktok. Trump is aware of the influence of the platform. He himself has 14.7 million followers there.
The White House says in its first comments that Tiktok should remain accessible to US users. This requires Tiktok to be transferred to US or other ownership that will dispel the national security concerns associated with it. The White House leaves the implementation of the law to the Trump administration.
If he wants, Trump has the opportunity after coming to power to issue a decree to save Tiktok, if he considers it beneficial to national security.
Trump could argue such a decision, for example, by saying that this way Tiktok users would not leak to, for example, the Chinese Rednote application. Rednote operates from China and is subject to its censorship.
Trump, at least recently, did not agree in an interview with the news channel CNN to say how he plans to act with Tiktok.
AP, Reuters