President Trump has signed an Executive Decree that delayed the effect of a federal law that prohibits Tiktok unless it is sold through its controlled owner through China, leaving many educators and academics who use social networks wondering what will happen next.
Tiktok has darkened the weekend, just to return in a few hours depending on Trump’s promise to sign the decree.
On January 20, hours after having sworn for the moment, Trump signed the order in the Oval office and advised in comments to the journalists that he would not be as involved in national security problems as the supporters of the law in Congress .
“TikTok is largely young people,” said Trump, who had unsuccessfully sought to ban TikTok during his first term. “I guess I have a warm spot for TikTok that I didn’t have originally. Then I went on TikTok, and I won young people.”
The president said he had replaced his brain in the prohibition of the platform “because I can use it. And remember, Tiktok is largely for children, young children. If China gets data on young children, I don’t know. To be fair with you , I think we have more vital disorders than that. »»
There are many open questions through the president’s action, especially if the technological corporations that are subject to the mechanism to apply the federal law – such as Apple, Google and Oracle – will take the president’s order in the sense that they can allow applications of applications of applications or provide technical updates.
And the extension of at least 75 days does not remove the law’s requirement that TikTok’s owner, ByteDance Ltd., sell the app to a U.S. owner. Trump put forth the idea of the U.S. government purchasing 50 percent of TikTok with some other owner or owners acquiring the rest, but that plan was short on details.
“I can see an agreement as a truth in which the United States obtains 50% Tiktok,” Trump said in his oval verbal exchange with journalists. “I’m going to tell you what. Each rich user called me on [an agreement for] Tiktok. “
Still, the Jan. 17 ruling by the Supreme Court angered educators who use the social media site to share ideas, learn new teaching skills, and even earn income as TikTok influencers.
Until this school year, Emily Glankler taught high school history in Austin, Texas. She is now a full-time content creator on TikTok and other social media sites.
“For me, [Tiktok] has led to almost every single connection that I have in the global of schooling and history,” Glankler said.
Trump’s decree puts Tiktok at stake, for now, for other people such as Glankler and the 170 million Americans who use the platform.
But it still remains unclear what will happen if the executive order expires and TikTok remains owned by a Chinese company.
Jeff Carpenter, a professor of schooling at Elon University who studies social media in schooling, said that the typical educator use of Tiktok “has been less social, compared to some of the other platforms where networks, communities and relationships are a little bit more important. , “According to their research.
If a Tiktok prohibition is restored, Carpenter said that for most educators, the maximum is that the maximum is to “waste a source of content and information related to education, which is about feeling that they are wasting relationships, networks or networks or Communities or communities, “Carpenter said. “
The justification of the federal law is double: first, China, which wields on the Bytedonce and its set of rules to feed videos to Tiktok users, can manipulate covers the Tiktok content to undermine US democracy. It meets the non -public knowledge of users.
During the Jan. 10 Supreme Court arguments in the challenge to the law, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh cited the data-collection concerns.
“I believe that Congress and the president feared China to access the data on millions of Americans, dozens of millions of Americans, adding adolescents, other twenty people, who would use this data over time to expand spies, other people, to other people, other people, to other people, to other people, to other people, To blackmail, other people who, from now on, paint in the FBI or the CIA or in the State Department, “Kavanaugh said.
The court’s unsigned opinion reflects the pressing stance of the case and the uncertainties of evolving technologies.
“We are aware that the matters that are seized with us involve new technologies with transformative capabilities,” the court said. “This new complicated context advises caution on our part. “
The court decided that the law, officially the US coverage of the foreign adversary applications law, is impartial in content and that its contested provisions satisfy an intermediate point of control of the first amendment.
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch concurred only in the outcome of the case, but did not agree with all of its First Amendment conclusions. He said: “I harbor serious reservations about whether the law before us is content neutral and thus escapes strict scrutiny,” or the highest level of constitutional analysis.
The court said the law justified the fear of the federal government on the prevention of China to collect “great quantities” of knowledge of Tiktok users in the United States.