State and country measures against the suppression of speech on TikTok and ByteDance, a popular video-streaming app

Lawyers for TikTok argue that even a partial severance of the algorithm would leave it without the recommendation engine that created a unique style and community.

The law that Congress passed was the first of its kind and it bars everyone from participating in an online community with more than a billion people, according to the lawsuit.

The law is based on “speculative and analytically flawed concerns about data security and content manipulation”, which could be addressed through far less restrictive and more narrowly tailored means, according to the filing.

Constitutional scholars say there are few ways for the government to restrict speech in a way that would survive a legal challenge. If the government can show a national security risk, that’s one of those ways. Legal experts say the government is showing speech suppression was the most restrictive option on the table.

Since then, Democrats and Republicans have shown a rare moment of unity around calls to pressure TikTok to sever its ties with ByteDance, the Beijing-based tech giant that own owns the video-streaming app.

Worries also persist in Washington that Beijing could influence the views of Americans by dictating what videos are boosted on the platform. Seven months before a presidential election, that concern is heightened.

There is no publicly available example of the Chinese government attempting to use TikTok as an espionage or data collection tool. And no proof that the Chinese government has ever had a hand over what TikTok’s 170 million American users see every day on the app.

TikTok says that it has invested $2 billion on a plan to separate its US operation from its Chinese parent company. It deleted all of Americans’ data from foreign servers and relocated all of the data to servers on U.S. soil overseen by the Austin-based tech company Oracle.

Reports surfaced showing that data was still moving between California and Beijing despite the plan to build trust with U.S. lawmakers and users.

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Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told NPR on Monday, he is planning to assemble a group of investors to try to purchase TikTok without the app’s algorithm.

Mnuchin, who declined to answer additional questions, said in between sessions at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles that the proposal to buy the app is still in the works, but he would not say when it would be formally submitted.

Despite the new law in the U.S., ByteDance says it does not intend to let go of the service. Beijing officials are against forced sale, so winning the support of China is necessary.

The algorithm, which involves millions of lines of software code developed by thousands of engineers over many years, cannot be easily transferred to the U.S., even if China did allow it, TikTok’s challenge states.

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