In an effort to allay lawmakers’ worries about national security and data protection, TikTok claims to have given the US government the authority to shut down the platform.
When it started its legal battle against laws that would have banned the app in America unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sold it, it revealed the “kill switch” offer that it had made in 2022.
The rule was adopted in response to worries that TikTok, which ByteDance and the company have always denied, may provide Chinese authorities access to user data from US users.
ByteDance and TikTok are pleading with the courts to overturn the law.
“This law creates a dangerous precedent that permits the political branches to target dissenting speech, which is a radical departure from this nation’s tradition of supporting an open Internet.”
Additionally, they asserted that the US government declined to hold meaningful settlement negotiations after 2022 and cited the “kill switch” offer as proof of the extent to which they were willing to go.
According to TikTok, if the platform had broken any of the guidelines, the government would have had the “explicit authority to suspend the platform in the United States at the US government’s sole discretion.”
According to a draft “National Security Agreement” that TikTok presented in August 2022, the firm would have been required to abide by regulations, including making sure that ByteDance was prevented from accessing the data of US customers and adequately financing its data protection divisions.
It stated that if the government had violated this agreement, the “kill switch” might have been activated.
