Is it finally curtains for TikTok? The Chinese Communist Party social media app, used by millions of Americans, was appealing the law that Congress voted on and Joe Biden signed to force parent company ByteDance to sell the app to a non-Chinese goverment controlled entity.

TikTok has long known to be collecting data on Americans and causing havoc among children, and has been banned on government devices because of the data gathering involved. We know that China is determined to infiltrate American technology wherever possible, and TikTok was a way for the CCP to waltz in the front door of the lives of so many Americans.

The law forcing divestment was challenged by TikTok at the Supreme Court, who argued that their First Amendment rights were being infringed by this law. The Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, shot them down.

The fact that this is a unanimous decision should speak volumes. The text of the decision lays out the reasoning that SCOTUS used to pinpoint that ByteDance is indeed CCP-controlled, and that the law marks TikTok as a “foreign adversary controlled application.” As such, the law signed by Biden is constitutional, and ByteDance has choices to make – sell or shut down. The First Amendment claim lost out to national security issues.

There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community. But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary. For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the challenged provisions do not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, while expressing some reservations in his concurrence (starting on page 23), also notes that ByteDance has had multiple options to resolve this situation, and that the information that TikTok has on its users can most definitely be accessed by the Chinese Communist Party.

… whatever the appropriate tier of scrutiny, I am persuaded that the law before us seeks to serve a compelling interest: preventing a foreign country, designated by Congress and the President as an adversary of our Nation, from harvesting vast troves of personal information about tens of millions of Americans. The record before us establishes that TikTok mines data both from TikTok users and about millions of others who do not consent to share their information. 2 App. 659. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, TikTok can access “any data” stored in a consenting user’s “contact list”—including names, photos, and other personal information about unconsenting third parties. Ibid. (emphasis added). And because the record shows that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) can require TikTok’s parent company “to cooperate with [its] efforts to obtain personal data,” there is little to stop all that information from ending up in the hands of a designated foreign adversary. Id., at 696; see id., at 673–676; ante, at 3. The PRC may then use that information to “build dossiers . . . for blackmail,” “conduct corporate espionage,” or advance intelligence operations. 1 App. 215; see 2 App. 659. To be sure, assessing exactly what a foreign adversary may do in the future implicates “delicate” and “complex” judgments about foreign affairs and requires “large elements of prophecy.” Chicago & Southern Air Lines, Inc. v. Waterman S. S. Corp., 333 U. S. 103, 111 (1948) (Jackson, J., for the Court). But the record the government has amassed in these cases after years of study supplies compelling reason for concern.

Finally, the law before us also appears appropriately tailored to the problem it seeks to address. Without doubt, the remedy Congress and the President chose here is dramatic. The law may require TikTok’s parent company to divest or (effectively) shutter its U. S. operations. But before seeking to impose that remedy, the coordinate branches spent years in negotiations with TikTok exploring alternatives and ultimately found them wanting. Ante, at 4. And from what I can glean from the record, that judgment was well founded.

Given just a handful of days after oral argument to issue an opinion, I cannot profess the kind of certainty I would like to have about the arguments and record before us. All I can say is that, at this time and under these constraints, the problem appears real and the response to it not unconstitutional. As persuaded as I am of the wisdom of Justice Brandeis in Whitney and Justice Holmes in Abrams, their cases are not ours. See supra, at 2. Speaking with and in favor of a foreign adversary is one thing. Allowing a foreign adversary to spy on Americans is another.

As Senator Tom Cotton points out, ByteDance has had multiple opportunities to sell TikTok. That they would rather shut it down than sell speaks volumes.

ByteDance and its Chinese Communist masters had nine months to sell TikTok before the Sunday deadline. The very fact that Communist China refuses to permit its sale reveals exactly what TikTok is: a communist spy app. The Supreme Court correctly rejected TikTok’s lies and…

— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) January 17, 2025

TikTok has announced that they will shut down on Sunday, January 19th in the United States. Joe Biden, who apparently didn’t remember by he signed this bill to begin with, announced that he would not enforce the ban. In his senility, Joe Biden is forgetting how law works. He can’t declare a new amendment just because he wants it, and he can’t refuse to enforce a law.

And yet perfectly in keeping with how he’s behaved from the start. https://t.co/7M7m9E4HoB

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) January 17, 2025

Karine Jean-Pierre, in a statement after the SCOTUS ruling was released, announced that this was now Trump’s problem, not theirs.

On Friday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the issues surrounding TikTok are now the Trump administration’s responsibility.

“TikTok should remain available to Americans, but simply under American ownership or other ownership that addresses the national security concerns identified by Congress in developing this law,” she said in a statement. “Given the sheer fact of timing, this Administration recognizes that actions to implement the law simply must fall to the next Administration, which takes office on Monday.”

President-elect Donald Trump said the Supreme Court’s decision was “expected,” and added that he’ll be making a decision on the fate of TikTok “in the not too distant future.”

Trump has done a 180 turn on TikTok, after saying it should be banned during his first administration, he now has a more tender spot for the app. Does Trump think he can earn some cheap goodwill by keeping the app available? There doesn’t seem to be a way to do that without forcing a sale – and ByteDance is hoping that Trump will spare them. I’m not sure he can.

In the meantime, Americans who are having absolute fits about TikTok shutting down are flocking to the alleged Chinese version of the app, called “RedBook.” As in, Mao’s Little Red Book. Though it is often called “RedNote,” the exact translation of the Chinese characters do indeed read “RedBook.” And because stupidly addicted Americans are so eager to stick it to the government, they are literally signing up for things they can’t read.

A U.S. official told CBS News on Thursday that RedNote, just like TikTok, could face an ultimatum to divest, or be banned.

“This appears to be the kind of app that the statute would apply to and could face the same restrictions as TikTok if it’s not divested,” a U.S. official told CBS News.

Xiaohongshu literally translates from Mandarin to “little red book,” likely a reference to the famed little red book of quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, the founding father of Communist China.

That reference has not put off the many American users who’ve turned to the app to share their experiences as so-called “TikTok refugees” ahead of the U.S. ban. Videos including a use of the “TikTok refugee” term on RedNote have racked up millions of views and impressions this week.

The rapid rise in U.S. downloads may be cause for concern for the same U.S. lawmakers who ushered in the ban on TikTok. One cybersecurity expert told CBS News that RedNote may actually represent an even greater threat.

“RedNote was never meant for outside of the China market. All of the data sharing and all the servers to which the data is being shared is in China,” Adrianus Warmenhoven, a cybersecurity expert at Nord VPN, told CBS News on Wednesday. “It means they are exempt from all of these data protections and outside of the view of the American government.”

Warmenhoven said TikTok and its parent company ByteDance had at least stored data in U.S.-based servers, which gave the U.S. government “some modicum of moderation or limitations on data that can be sent to China and how much and in what way.”

He also said RedNote’s terms and conditions lack transparency, which he said presents a huge cybersecurity risk for Americans.

“Its terms and conditions are in Mandarin, leaving non-Chinese-speaking users unclear about what data is collected and how it’s used,” Warmenhoven said. “I’m pretty sure those millions who are moving over are not using Google Translate to read [the terms and conditions] so they don’t know what they are agreeing to.”

And because RedNote was not meant for users outside China, the CCP is panicking about native Chinese users being exposed to Americans.

Hilarious. China is worried that Americans dumb enough to join their app might infect Chinese users.

This is a reminder that despite blocking the sale of TikTok to a US entity, China bans the app for Chinese users. It also bans almost any social media it doesn't control. pic.twitter.com/xEgGOPPfk5

— AG (@AGHamilton29) January 17, 2025

The idiots flocking to join RedNote might end up getting it banned in the United States because China has no interest in letting Americans talk directly to their citizens, even if those users are total dumbasses. Wouldn’t that be ironic?

TikTok now has a choice, and it’s the same one they had before. SCOTUS did not save them, Biden is apparently going to ignore them, and while Trump might be warm to them now, there may not be much he can do. They can either sell and make billions, or they can shut it down. Senator Cotton is correct – if they choose to close up shop in the United States, then it just proves what was being said all along – this was an app designed to data mine and spy on Americans, and without that ability, it is useless to China.

Featured image: Solen Feyissa on flickr, cropped, CC BY-SA 2.0