TikTok Seeks Emergency Injunction As Forced-Sale Deadline Nears — Creators Prepare for the App’s Possible U.S. Shutdown

TikTok is seeking an emergency injunction amid a push to bring its case before the Supreme Court. Photo Credit: Visuals

41 days out from TikTok’s possible shutdown in the U.S., the app is seeking an emergency injunction as it works to bring an appeal before the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, creators are preparing for the worst, and prospective buyers are still exploring deals.

That emergency injunction push follows a unanimous federal appeals court ruling against TikTok late last week. The development marked the newest in a long line of regulatory setbacks for the ByteDance subsidiary, which has been fighting the relevant measure (the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act) since before it became law in April.

Nearly eight months and multiple legal efforts later, though, there’s a greater chance than ever that TikTok could cease operating in the States. Under the law, which we previously broke down in detail, ByteDance has until January 19th to sell the platform or see it shut down in the world’s largest economy.

While the president can extend the deadline by 90 days, it’s unclear whether President Biden intends to do so. And with the cutoff set to arrive one day before President-elect Trump takes office, the absence of an extension would seemingly result in TikTok’s going dark regardless of how the incoming administration approaches the situation.

From the outset, ByteDance has maintained that a TikTok sale simply isn’t in the cards. (Admittedly, even if the company was open to a sale as a last resort, it couldn’t very well come out and say as much.) At present, the gameplan – attempting to fend off the law in any way possible – appears to be the same.

TikTok today filed for an emergency injunction pausing the January 19th deadline until the Supreme Court hears its appeal of last week’s ruling. These and related maneuvers – which are certainly worth monitoring as 2024 wraps up – aren’t stopping third parties from pursuing deals for TikTok, however.

Since the sell-or-shutdown bill became law, potential TikTok purchasers have emerged in former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick (along with OpenAI’s Sam Altman), Pershing Square founder and head Bill Ackman, former treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin, former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty, and Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary.

Despite the multibillion-dollar price tag that any deal would carry, others yet are also looking to get in on the TikTok-buyout action. Without diving too far into the complex subject (or the wisdom of dropping billions on one of the numerous video-sharing apps operating today), it should be reiterated that TikTok’s algorithms are a key component of its value and reach.

Unsurprisingly, then, TikTok is hardly in a hurry to hand over those algorithms – nor is sale approval likely from the Chinese government, which owns a piece of ByteDance and is central to the data-security arguments that resulted in the forced-sale law.

Notwithstanding TikTok’s inherent bias, there appears to be weight to claims of a partial sale’s unprecedented logistical hurdles. Not confined to data-storage considerations, said hurdles extend to interactions between U.S. and international accounts (the latter remaining part of ByteDance’s TikTok, of course) and a whole lot else.

As things stand, TikTokers are preparing for the worst by encouraging fans to follow them on different platforms. More than hitting content creators, a shutdown would affect a variety of adjacent industries as well – chief among them the music space.

DMN Pro has broken down the post-TikTok industry’s winners and losers, and like with the forced-sale law itself, there are many moving parts here. Just scratching the surface, individual indie labels, having reportedly received lowball licensing offers from TikTok, might not be too bothered by the platform’s predicament.

Link to the source article – https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2024/12/09/tiktok-emergency-injunction-december-2024/

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