This was reported by espreso.tv

The company claims that the bill "vaguely describes TikTok as a threat to national security".

The popular social video company argues that the law, signed by President Joe Biden as part of a $95 billion package of aid to foreign countries, is so "clearly unconstitutional" that sponsors are allegedly trying to present it not as a ban but as a regulation of TikTok's property.

"Congress has taken the unprecedented step of clearly singling out and banning TikTok: a live online forum for protected speech and expression used by 170 million Americans to create, share, and watch videos online. This is the first time in history that Congress has passed a law that places a permanent nationwide ban on the only speech platform with a name and prohibits every American from participating in a unique online community of more than 1 billion people worldwide", ByteDance said in a lawsuit filed in a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.

According to the lawsuit, the Chinese government has "made it clear" that it will not allow ByteDance to abandon the recommendation engine, which is "key to TikTok's success in the United States".

TikTok and ByteDance argued in the lawsuit that they were not given a choice.

"The qualified divestiture required by law to allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally. There is no doubt about it: The law will force TikTok to shut down by January 19, 2025", the company said.

The lawsuit also claims that ByteDance cannot abandon its U.S. TikTok platform as a separate entity from the rest of TikTok, which has 1 billion users worldwide — most of them outside the United States.

TikTok also describes the divestiture as a technological impossibility, as the law requires that all millions of lines of TikTok's program code be seized from ByteDance so that there is no "operational relationship" between the Chinese company and the new American app.

The parties argued that they should be protected by the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech. They are seeking a declaratory judgment that the law violates the U.S. Constitution.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the lawsuit. And White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to answer questions about why the president continues to use TikTok for his political activities.

• On Saturday, April 20, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would ban TikTok in the United States if the owner does not sell the app.
• European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, does not rule out that the Chinese service for creating and watching short videos, TikTok may be blocked in the EU.