While no one knows for sure what a Sunday shutdown of TikTok, the popular short-video platform, might look like, experts in social media, technology, data privacy and entertainment law were buzzing about the U.S Supreme Court’s unanimous decision to uphold a law requiring TikTok’s Chinese-owned parent company, ByteDance, to divest the short video platform or face a ban in the United States.
After SCOTUS’ decision was announced Friday, litigators and law professors, asked to weigh the potential ban’s future implications for privacy, national security and the influencer economy, urged caution for content creators and influencers, and said China-based ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, already has had access to the data of 170 million U.S. users, calling it a “bell that cannot be unrung.”