The US Supreme Court voted unanimously on Friday that the bill banning the social media platform does not violate the US constitution.
The ruling came after TikTok’s owner ByteDance sued the bill for violating the right to free speech, as enshrined in the 2nd amendment of the US constitution. According to the bill, ByteDance has to either sell off the platform by Sunday, or face a complete ban in the United States.
While American lawmakers cited threats to national security as their main concern for passing the bill banning TikTok, many US politicians as well as other political organizations have pointed out to the growing pro-Palestinian sentiment on the platform as one of the reasons for their support of the ban.
For example during a conversation between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Republican Senator Mitt Romney as part at the Sedona Forum, both sides expressed concerns about the pro-Palestine posts being shared on TikTok.
During the conversation Sen. Romney admitted the role this concern had in passing the bill, saying, “some wonder why there was such an overwhelming support for us to shut down, potentially, TikTok… if you look at the postings on TikTok and the relative number of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites, it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts”
After first being introduced in 2016, TikTok rapidly grew in popularity, acquiring over 100 million American users by 2020. One of the reasons that has been cited for TikTok’s growing popularity is the increasing censorship on American social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, with content criticizing Israel or LGBT regularly being subject to restrictions.