Immediately after U.S. President Joe Biden signed a bill forcing the sale of TikTok’s U.S. business on the 24th (local time), TikTok CEO Zhou Xuzhi said, “We are not going anywhere.”
In a video posted that day, CEO Zhou said, “The facts and the Constitution are on our side, and we expect to win again.” Previously, TikTok faced the risk of being kicked out of the United States several times, but each time it avoided the crisis by using the ‘freedom of expression’ guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution as a shield. This can be interpreted as an intention to actively raise legal objections to the bill.
The ‘TikTok Ban Act’, which went into effect with President Biden’s signature, requires the sale of TikTok’s US business within 270 days. A 90-day extension can be obtained once under the authority of the President, but if the sale is not made even after that, TikTok will be completely expelled from the app market in the United States. Apps already installed on personal smartphones can be used for the time being, but they will no longer be able to update security patches and will eventually disappear from the market.
The tech industry believes that if TikTok engages in litigation related to the bill, it will take a considerable amount of time for the law to actually go into effect. The New York Times (NYT) said the previous day, “The bill has been passed, but now the real difficult part begins,” adding, “This bill may face problems such as legal battles and Chinese hostility in the future, or it may be difficult to find a buyer.”
In fact, TikTok plans to immediately enter into a legal battle under the argument that the bill infringes on the ‘freedom of expression’ guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In addition, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has a corporate value of $225 billion (about 308 trillion won), and the sale price of its U.S. business is expected to be more than tens of billions of dollars. The NYT analyzed that there is a possibility that no buyer will appear, saying, “Buyers who can afford this price are limited to large corporations, and it is highly likely that the acquisition of big tech companies such as Meta or Google will be blocked as it violates anti-monopoly laws.” A tech industry official said, “The Chinese government, which vehemently opposes the sale of TikTok, may come up with various retaliatory measures.”
However, while TikTok is engaged in a legal battle with the U.S. government, competitors Google and Meta are expected to benefit. The Washington Post said on the 24th, “(The TikTok ban) is the biggest gift the U.S. Congress has given to Big Tech in years,” and added, “The ‘demonization’ public opinion that TikTok is dangerous is the biggest competitor Meta has faced so far. “We will succeed in neutralizing a strong opponent.” In fact, Instagram, run by Meta, and Google’s YouTube were on the defensive to the extent that they quickly launched a service that copied TikTok’s ‘short form video’ as they lost users after TikTok gained popularity. As more people leave TikTok, the number of people flowing into similar services from Google and Meta will naturally increase.
