TikTok threatened with ban: eight users sue the United States

They are between 25 and 50 years old, are a sports coach, a cookie seller or even an Air Force veteran, live all over the United States, and all have the common point of using TikTok to talk about their favorite subjects with hundreds of thousands, even millions, of subscribers. Tuesday May 14, eight American TikTokers filed a complaint against the United States. The reason for their anger: the law adopted at the end of April by Washington, which obliges ByteDance, Chinese owner of TikTok, to sell the platform, otherwise it will be banned on American territory.

According to their complaint, this law contravenes the American First Amendment which guarantees freedom of expression. She “threatens to deprive them and the rest of the country of this particular means of expression and communication”. These persons “found their voice, amassed significant audiences, made new friends, were exposed to new and different ways of thinking – all thanks to TikTok’s unique way of hosting, curating and to spread the words.” The plaintiffs believe that this law is “unconstitutional”because she “prohibits a means of communication in its entirety and all speech expressed through it, although the vast majority of them are protected.”

“If you write off TikTok, you write off my way of life”

The document brushes aside the argument that a ban on TikTok would not prevent creators from expressing themselves through other platforms: “If we stick to the First Amendment, this would amount to prohibiting independent American authors from submitting articles to The Economist, or for American musicians to broadcast their songs on Spotify. »

The document also emphasizes that TikTok, in particular, has allowed these creators to gather a community and, sometimes, also earn revenue. These creators “rely on TikTok to express themselves, learn, defend causes, share opinions, develop communities, and even earn a living”.

He cites, for example, the case of one of the eight plaintiffs, Brian Firebaugh, who, after serving in the navy and then going through a dark period, bought a small ranch and began sharing information about agriculture on TikTok and its products. Thanks to his 430,000 subscribers, he managed, details the complaint, to generate an income allowing him to devote himself full time to his ranch. “Deprived of access to TikTok, Firebaugh would be forced to find another job and finance child care for his son, rather than raising him at home. As he himself says, “if you write off TikTok, you write off my way of life”. »

Legal costs covered by TikTok

The plaintiffs also believe that the main reason justifying this law – concerns about the security of Americans’ data on a Chinese platform – does not hold. It’s just about “speculations”we can read in the complaint, which recalls that American justice has already, in the past, rejected this idea.

The arguments deployed by these eight TikTokers are similar to those put forward by TikTok and ByteDance last week, when they themselves filed a complaint against the United States to denounce a law “unconstitutional”.

It must be said that the company is no stranger to their approach. Their legal costs are covered by TikTok and the law firm that represents them, Davis Wright Tremaine, had already sued the United States in 2020 on behalf of three TikTokers to prevent the ban on the platform, supported at the time by Donald Trump. A federal judge agreed with them, finding that the threat that the social network would represent to national security was “hypothetical”. In response to the lawsuit filed Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement that the law threatening to ban TikTok “addresses critical national security concerns, while respecting the First Amendment”.