Virginia is among a coalition of states urging an appeals court to uphold a new law that could potentially ban TikTok nationwide. “We cannot allow a foreign government to exploit our personal information or influence our younger generation with dangerous content,” Attorney General Jason Miyares said in a Monday news release. “The divest-or-ban legislation is a necessary measure to safeguard Americans.
” TikTok is a global social media platform for creating and sharing short videos. President Joe Biden signed a bill this year that would outlaw TikTok if ByteDance — its Beijing-based parent company — doesn’t sell its stake. Legislators concerned with TikTok say it’s a threat to national security because the Chinese Communist Party can demand access to its consumer data, and more than 170 million Americans use the platform.
TikTok and ByteDance filed a legal challenge in May in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit arguing no public evidence has been presented to back claims that TikTok is a security threat and that the law is unconstitutional and violates the First Amendment. Along with Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, Miyares is co-leading an amicus brief from 21 states urging the court to reject this argument. “(The law) bans TikTok not for its speech but because of separate harms: its practices of harvesting reams of personal, private data from American users and sharing that data with a hostile foreign government,” the brief st.