by Jody Godoy
(Reuters) – TikTok told an appeals court on Thursday that the U.S. Justice Department had misrepresented the social media app's ties to China, urging the court to overturn a law requiring China's ByteDance to sell TikTok's U.S. assets or face a ban.
TikTok, which has sued to change the law, said the Justice Department made factual errors in the case. Attorneys for the department said last month that the app poses a national security risk by allowing the Chinese government to collect the information of Americans and secretly manipulate what content they see.
TikTok said Thursday that there is no doubt that the app's content recommendation engine and user data are stored in the US on cloud servers operated by Oracle (NYSE: ) and that content rating decisions affecting US users are made in the US.
Signed by President Joe Biden on April 24, the law gives ByteDance until Jan. 19 to sell TikTok or face a ban. The White House says it wants to see China-based ownership eliminated on national security grounds, but not the TikTok ban.
The appeals court will hold oral arguments on the legal challenge on September 16, putting the issue of TikTok's fate in the final weeks of the November 5 presidential election.
Republican President Donald Trump joined TikTok and said in June that he would never support a ban on TikTok.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, joined TikTok in July and leaned on social media as part of her campaign strategy.
TikTok argued Thursday that the law would strip the company of its free speech rights, countering the Justice Department's claim that the short video app's content control decisions are “speech of a foreigner” and not protected by the US Constitution.
“From the government's point of view, an American newspaper that republishes the content of a foreign publication – for example, Reuters – cannot be constitutionally protected,” the company said.
The law prevents app stores like Apple (NASDAQ: ), and Alphabet (NASDAQ: )'s Google, from offering TikTok and bars internet hosting services from supporting TikTok unless ByteDance releases it.
Driven by concerns among US lawmakers that China could access Americans' data or spy on the app, Congress overwhelmingly passed the measure just weeks after it was introduced.
