The statement came hours after the Supreme Court upheld a law banning TikTok in the United States on national security grounds unless its Chinese parent company ByteDance sells it to an approved American buyer, which it continues to refuse.
With this decision, the popular app for short videos threatens to disappear tomorrow.
Apple, Alphabet’s Google, Oracle and others could face huge fines if they continue to provide services to TikTok after the ban takes effect, Hina reports.
“Unless the Biden administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers by guaranteeing non-compliance, TikTok will unfortunately be forced to cease operations on January 19,” the company said.
The court decision throws the platform and its 170 million US users into limbo, and puts its fate in the hands of Donald Trump, who has vowed to save TikTok after he returns to the presidency on Monday.
The law was passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in Congress last year and signed by Biden, although a growing body of lawmakers who voted for it are now calling for TikTok to continue operating in the United States.
TikTok, ByteDance and some of the app’s users challenged the law, but the Supreme Court ruled that it did not violate the US Constitution’s First Amendment protections against government restrictions on free speech, as they argued.
Trump, who tried to ban TikTok in 2020, said he plans to take steps to save the app.
“My decision on TikTok will be made in the not-so-distant future, but I need to have time to review the situation. Stay tuned,” said Trump in a post on social networks, who talked about this by phone with Chinese President Xi Jinping yesterday.
China’s ownership of TikTok has raised concerns among US leaders for years, with lawmakers and the Biden administration saying China could use TikTok to collect data on millions of Americans for harassment, recruitment and espionage, and the fight against the platform comes amid rising trade tensions between the two largest world economies.
(Vijesti.ba)
