TikTok CEO Chew Shou Zi said the company expects to win a legal challenge to block legislation signed into law by President Joe Biden.WASHINGTON - TikTok’s chief executive said on April 24 that the company expects to win a legal challenge to block legislation signed into law by President Joe Biden that he said would ban the popular short video app used by 170 million Americans.
In 2020, Trump was blocked by the courts in his bid to ban TikTok and Chinese-owned WeChat, a unit of Tencent, in the United States. The four-year battle over TikTok is a significant front in a war over the internet and technology between Washington and Beijing. Last week, Apple said China had ordered it to remove Meta Platforms' WhatsApp and Threads from its App Store in China over Chinese national security concerns.
However, the new legislation is likely to give the Biden administration a stronger legal footing to ban TikTok if ByteDance fails to divest the app, experts say. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden said he was concerned the bill “provides broad authority that could be abused by a future administration to violate Americans’ First Amendment rights”.