Rep. Jamaal Bowman participates as TikTok content creators gather outside the Capitol to voice their opposition to a potential ban on the app, highlighting the platform's impact on their livelihoods and communities in Washington, D.C, on March 22, 2023.
“Congress has taken the unprecedented step of expressly singling out and banning TikTok: a vibrant online forum for protected speech and expression used by 170 million Americans to create, share, and view videos over the Internet,” the company wrote“If Congress can do this, it can circumvent the First Amendment by invoking national security and ordering the publisher of any individual newspaper or website to sell to avoid being shut down.
TikTok contends that the government has not adequately outlined any national security “threat posed by TikTok nor explain why TikTok should be excluded from evaluation under the standards Congress concurrently imposed on every other platform,” and accused the government of operating on “hypothetical” concerns.