The United States Supreme Court has ruled that a federal law that bans the TikTok app unless its owner sells it to a non-Chiniese company can move forward but it might not matter.
President Biden will reportedly not enforce the ban, leaving it up to incoming president Donald Trump to decide how to move forward.
Having once supported the ban, Trump has changed his mind and is no longer in favor of an immediate shutdown of the popular social media platform.
Bytedance had argued that its 1st Amendment rights were infringed by the law. At a hearing last Friday, a majority of the justices appeared skeptical of that argument.
U.S. officials have alleged TikTok allows Beijing to collect data and spy on users and is a conduit to spread propaganda.
The company denied the claim and says it has more than 700 million users in the U.S. who would be hurt by the law.
The high court issued its ruling on Friday morning.
The company was to be blocked from online app stores on January 19, 2025, due to the ruling.
That would have meant new users could not download the app but it could remain operational if the company wanted to keep it running.
There was an unconfirmed report ahead of the ruling that Bytedance would shut it down completely if it lost the case.
The company denied another report that it was considering selling the social media platform to Elon Musk.
"We cannot be expected to comment on pure fiction," a TikTok spokesperson told AFP on Tuesday.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Originally published on IBTimes
