January 10, 2025
Alright. Let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about what happened with TikTok at the Supreme Court this morning. So first, I’m gonna say that this is going to be a very long video, and that is because I listened to the entire 2 hours and 40 minutes of oral arguments. And in this video, I’m gonna take you inside the courtroom.
So if you care about TikTok and you want to know what actually happened, have a seat, pull up a chair, it’s gonna be a while. 2nd, I wanna make it abundantly clear, no one, no media organization, no person who was inside that courtroom, no person listening to the oral arguments live, even like me, can tell you how the justices are going to rule. Anyone who is telling you that is speculating. No one has any idea. The justices, most of the time, do not give away their position on a case.
In fact, sometimes they can make you think they’re leaning a certain way based on the questions they ask and then in the end rule the completely opposite way. And 3rd, the TikTok ban will happen in 9 days unless the Supreme Court stops it in some way. It is happening. There is no time frame for when the justices will issue a ruling in the case. It can come at any point in the next 9 days.
So let’s start there. If the Supreme Court does not step in and does not stop this ban, what is going to happen to TikTok on January 19th? It’s gone as I have reported repeatedly and as TikTok’s lawyers confirm to the justices. So that begs the question, what about president-elect Trump? Can he step in and save TikTok after he’s sworn in one day after the ban takes effect?
The government acknowledged that would be very dicey. Okay. So let’s talk about the actual arguments the justices are weighing. On one side, whether the law violates the constitution by infringing on the first amendment rights of TikTok, the US based company, and the rights of the 170,000,000 American TikTok users. And on the other side, whether that right should be pushed aside because the government says there is a possibility that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, which is based in China, could potentially use covert content manipulation, could potentially collect American data, and therefore could be a national security risk.
It’s a balancing act. The justices seemed to really take to heart the government’s points about national security concerns and data collection concerns. But justice Gorsuch and justice Kagan had a lot of problems with the government’s arguments and position that the covert content manipulation threats are more important than the first amendment. TikTok’s lawyer did admit to justice Kavanaugh that the possibility of TikTok collecting American data and then China somehow getting their hands on it is a valid concern, but he argued that possibility still does not outweigh the first amendment. The lawyer for the 8 US based TikTok creators who are suing in this case said that’s because data collection is not the real reason why congress decided to ban TikTok.
He argued the real reason was because congress doesn’t like the type of content that appears on TikTok. And how does he know that? Well, he says because other Chinese based companies that operate in the United States like Tmoo and Xi’an openly collect US user data and were excluded from this law. But the government sees this very, very differently. They argue that this law is in no way a violation of the First Amendment rights of TikTok or of the 170,000,000 American users because Congress said those people and that company has no First Amendment right to speak on a platform that’s owned by an adversary country like China, which is, according to the government, hell bent on American destruction.
TikTok argued to the justices that instead of considering lesser punishments on TikTok because of its Chinese ownership, like perhaps forcing a warning label to be put on the platform, Congress jumped straight ahead to banning the platform, which as a consequence is now silencing a 170,000,000 American users and that US based company. In the end, the justices are left with the question I started with at the beginning of this video. Does your first amendment right and the first amendment right of TikTok outweigh the government’s fear that TikTok, through its Chinese based parent company, can through multiple different potential ways threaten our national security. Here’s how TikTok left it with here’s how TikTok’s lawyer left it with the justices. I’ll let you know when the justices issue a ruling.
Listen to TikTok oral arguments here.
