The Justice Department has stepped up its efforts to ban TikTok, saying in a court filing Friday that continuing to operate the app in its current state may lead to election manipulation.
The request was made in response to a lawsuit filed by TikTok looking for to dam the federal government’s ban, with the Justice Department warning that the app’s algorithm and parent company ByteDance’s alleged ties to the Chinese government may very well be utilized in a campaign of “secret manipulation.”
“Among other things, it would allow a foreign government to improperly interfere in our political system and discourse, including our elections … if, for example, the Chinese government decided that the outcome of a particular American election was sufficiently important to Chinese interests,” the document said.
According to a law passed in April, TikTok must discover a latest owner by January 2025 or it would be banned within the US.
The company has filed suit to overturn the law, saying it violates its First Amendment rights. The Justice Department has denied those claims.
“The law addresses national security concerns specifically related to TikTok’s connection to a hostile foreign power, not the suppression of protected speech,” the officials wrote.
TikTok has been a significant concern for the U.S. government for five years due to ByteDance’s ties to China. Critics fear the Chinese government could potentially exert influence over users through the positioning’s algorithm and the vast amounts of knowledge the app collects on U.S. users.
The algorithm, US authorities wrote, “can be manually manipulated, and because it is located in China, the Chinese government could secretly control it – and thus secretly influence the content that American users receive.”
CEO Daily provides crucial context to the news that leaders across the business world have to know. Every weekday morning, greater than 125,000 readers trust CEO Daily for insights into the C-suite and its surroundings. Subscribe now.
