Apple wants to ensure it has a voice in the remedies trial for the Justice Department’s search monopolization case against Google, and filed an emergency motion to stay the proceedings while it appeals the district court’s denial of its request to be more directly heard in the case.
The remedies phase of the trial is set to begin in April, since US District Court Judge Amit Mehta already found Google liable for illegal monopolization in the general search market. Even though Apple is not technically a party in the case, it has played a significant role in it — the billions of dollars Google pays Apple each year for default placement on iOS helped convinced Mehta of Google’s monopoly power.
Mehta denied Apple’s request to take a limited role in the remedies phase of the case in an order earlier this week, saying it didn’t file fast enough. Instead, he said, Apple could file post-hearing briefs explaining its views. The DOJ and state plaintiffs had opposed Apple taking part in the proceedings, while Google did not take a position.
Apple believes it now needs to take a role in the case because unlike in the earlier stage, its interests may no longer be sufficiently represented by Google. The government’s proposals to end lucrative deals for Apple — where Google pays for default positioning — “implicates concerns unique to Apple,” it says. Apple worries that Google will need to decide which arguments to focus on most — including the government’s request that the Chrome browser business be spun out — and the ones that concern Apple might not be adequately covered.
Apple writes that if its appeal isn’t handled until after the remedies trial has begun and it’s unable to participate, “Apple may well be forced to stand mute at trial, as a mere spectator, while the government pursues an extreme remedy that targets Apple by name and would prohibit any commercial arrangement between Apple and Google for a decade. This would leave Apple without the ability to defend its right to reach other arrangements with Google that could benefit millions of users and Apple’s entitlement to compensation for distributing Google search to its users.”
While Mehta hopes to resolve the case by August, Apple says that “the concern about a short delay is outweighed by the need for a fully developed record that includes information that only Apple can develop,” like how the DOJ’s proposals to eliminate Google’s monopoly power would impact Apple, and why they might not work. Apple said in its initial motion to intervene that it would offer evidence that despite the government’s suggestions, it would not create a general search engine were it not bound by its default agreement with Google.
If Mehta doesn’t grant the stay pending appeal, Apple requested at the very least that it gain access to discovery and depositions as a non-party while the Circuit Court considers its appeal. “Absent a stay,” the company writes, “Apple will suffer irreparable harm.”
Generative artificial intelligence output based purely on text prompts — even detailed ones — isn’t protected by current copyright law, according to the US Copyright Office.
The department issued this guidance in a broad report on policy issues regarding AI, focused on the copyrightability of various AI outputs. The document concludes that while generative AI may be a new technology, existing copyright principles can apply without changes to the law — and these principles offer limited protection for many kinds of work.
The new guidelines say that AI prompts currently don’t offer enough control to “make users of an AI system the authors of the output.” (AI systems themselves can’t hold copyrights.) That stands true whether the prompt is extremely simple or involves long strings of text and multiple iterations. “No matter how many times a prompt is revised and resubmitted, the final output reflects the user’s acceptance of the AI system’s interpretation, rather than authorship of the expression it contains,” the report says.
This decision would seemingly rule out protections for works like “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial,” a controversial award-winning Midjourney-generated image whose creator fought an extended battle to register it with the Copyright Office.
The office demonstrates the unpredictability of AI systems with a Gemini-produced image of a cat smoking a pipe and reading a newspaper, noting that Gemini ignored some prompt instructions and added a few things of its own — including an “incongruous human hand.” It contrasted this process with Jackson Pollock’s splatter painting method, where he didn’t control the exact placement of the paint on the canvas, but “controlled the choice of colors, number of layers, depth of texture, placement of each addition to the overall composition — and used his own body movements to execute each of these choices.” Ultimately, the office writes, “the issue is the degree of human control, rather than the predictability of the outcome.”
“No matter how many times a prompt is revised and resubmitted, the final output reflects the user’s acceptance of the AI system’s interpretation, rather than authorship of the expression it contains.”
At the same time, the Copyright Office says that simply using AI to assist in human creative output does not necessarily jeopardize that work’s ability to be protected by the law. There’s a difference between AI being used as a tool to assist a creative work and “AI as a stand-in for human creativity,” and the office says that further analysis is warranted. But it assures creatives that using AI to outline a book or come up with song ideas shouldn’t impact the ability to copyright the final human-produced work, since the author is simply “referencing, but not incorporating, the output.”
Artists can get some protection if they feed their own work into an AI system for modification — by, say, using a tool to add 3D effects to an illustration. AI-generated elements of the work still wouldn’t be protectable, but if the original product remains recognizable, the “perceptible human expression” in the work could still be covered by copyright.
People can also receive protection for works that incorporate AI-generated content as long as there’s significant creative modification. A comic with AI-generated images can be covered if a human arranges those images and pairs them with human-written text, though the individual AI-generated images wouldn’t be protected. Likewise, “a film that includes AI-generated special effects or background artwork is copyrightable, even if the AI effects and artwork separately are not.” On a “case-by-case determination,” even prompt-generated images could be protected if a human selects and remixes specific areas of the picture. The office compares these scenarios to making copyrightable derivative works of human-created art — minus the original human.
A separate question is whether text prompts themselves can be protected by copyright. Overall, the office compared prompts to “instructions” that convey uncopyrightable ideas, but it acknowledged some particularly creative ones could include “expressive elements.” This doesn’t, however, translate into the work they produce being protected.
The Copyright Office didn’t rule out the potential for this to change if the technology evolves. “In theory, AI systems could someday allow users to exert so much control over how their expression is reflected in an output that the system’s contribution would become rote or mechanical,” the report says. But as of now, it doesn’t seem that prompts “adequately determine the expressive elements produced, or control how the system translates them into an output.”
This document is part of a larger effort by the Copyright Office to clarify policy questions and identify legal gaps around AI, starting with a July 2024 report encouraging new deepfake laws. The office next plans to issue a third and final report on its findings on “the legal implications of training AI models on copyrighted works.”
It’s a step that Trump discussed with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg during his recent visit to Mar-a-Lago, The Verge has independently confirmed. One unnamed source told The Journal that Trump indicated the lawsuit would need to be resolved before Zuckerberg would have a chance of being “brought into the tent.”
The White House and an advisor to Trump did not immediately provide comment.
The settlement, which would contribute $22 million toward Trump’s presidential library funds as well as legal fees, is the latest signal of Trump’s powerful influence over corporate America. Trump’s odds of success in the case did not look particularly promising, given that a judge dismissed a similar suit filed against Twitter (now X) and another against Google was administratively closed. The docket has been stagnant since 2023. But now back in the White House, Zuckerberg and many of his tech and business peers have recognized the immense influence Trump could wield over their companies and have taken a much more proactive role in engaging with his administration compared to last time.
Trump filed a class action lawsuit against Meta in 2021, seeking damages for himself and other users whose accounts were allegedly “wrongly restricted or curtailed.” Facebook had announced an indefinite suspension on Trump’s accounts after his posts during the January 6th insurrection at the US Capitol that year. At the time, Zuckerberg said, “The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.” Eventually, the company dropped restrictions on his accounts.
The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is walking back the federal funding freeze memo that set off a day of chaos and confusion on Tuesday up until a judge paused the order right before it was set to take effect.
“In light of the injunction, OMB has rescinded the memo to end any confusion on federal policy created by the court ruling and the dishonest media coverage,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. Leavitt said that other executive orders on “funding reviews” would remain in effect and that more would follow. “This action should effectively end the court case and allow the government to focus on enforcing the President’s orders on controlling federal spending. In the coming weeks and months, more executive action will continue to end the egregious waste of federal funding.”
The original memo would have paused the disbursement of federal grants and financial assistance programs, but its ambiguity and breadth led to a scramble for answers on what exactly would be impacted. The funding freeze would have likely applied to some funds for clean energy that were a hallmark of the Biden administration’s legacy. During a press briefing Tuesday, the White House fielded several questions about what exactly the original funding freeze order applied to, and clarified it would not apply to programs providing direct assistance to Americans like Medicare and Social Security. Even so, apparent technical issues with Medicaid reimbursement portals deepened the uncertainty.
Just before the freeze was set to take effect Tuesday, a judge halted it, allowing the government to continue disbursing funds that had already been authorized. The pause would expire Monday evening, however, unless the judge took further action to stop the order from taking effect. Now it seems the White House has backed off this particular court battle, as it defends other orders that Trump issued in a marathon signing session in his first week in office.
Netflix users on iOS no longer need to download episodes of their favorite shows one by one. The streamer just introduced a way to download an entire season of a TV show with one click on iPhones and iPads.
When the Supreme Court upheld a law that banned TikTok from the US, it seemed well aware that its ruling could resonate far beyond one app. The justices delivered an unsigned opinion with a quote from Justice Felix Frankfurter from 1944: “in considering the application of established legal rules to the ‘totally new problems’ raised by the airplane and radio, we should take care not to ‘embarrass the future.’”
Last Friday, the court tried to accomplish this with a narrow ruling: a decision that upheld the government’s ability to ban one service on a tight timeline, while stressing a limited scope concerning “new technologies with transformative capabilities.” Yet, amid a confounding political circus over TikTok, some legal experts believe the Supreme Court’s ruling could have a broad ripple effect on speech and tech law — they’re just not agreed on what it would be.
“Even though it’s narrowly written, it also seems clear that they want to make a mark on these kinds of questions,” says Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University’s public policy school. University of Chicago law professor Genevieve Lakier put it more bluntly on Bluesky: “The Court...
Epic Games plans to add nearly 20 third-party games onto its mobile app store worldwide on Android and in the European Union on iOS and launching its free games program on mobile beginning with Bloons TD 6 and Dungeon of the Endless: Apogee. It’s also promising to paysome iOS fees for developers that are part of the program to overcome what Epic calls a major hurdle to moving outside the App Store.
“Our aim here isn’t just to launch a bunch of different stores in different places, but to build a single, cross-platform store in which, within the era of multi-platform games, if you buy a game or digital items in one place, you have the ability to own them everywhere,” Epic CEO Tim Sweeney told reporters during a press briefing. Under the program, Epic will offer new free games in the store each month before eventually switching to a weekly schedule.
However, the games aren’t actually in the store yet — Epic said on Thursday that it “ran into a few bugs that we’re working through now” and “we’ll provide an update once the games are live and ready to play!”
The news is out! We're bringing a bunch of awesome new third-party games to the Epic Games Store on mobile but ran into a few bugs that we're working through now.
We'll provide an update once the games are live and ready to play!
To sweeten the deal for developers that participate in the free games program on iOS, Epic will help defray the cost of using third-party marketplaces. For one year, it will pay these developers’ Core Technology Fee (CTF): a 50 euro cent fee levied on every install of an iOS app that uses third-party stores after it exceeds 1 million annual downloads. (Apple gives developers with less than €10 million in global revenue a three-year on-ramp.)
Epic has been an outspoken critic of the CTF. In a blog post shared with The Verge, it laments that “even if a developer decides to list just one game on the Epic Games Store, they have to pay the fee every time any of their games are downloaded on iPhones or iPads, whether it’s from the Apple App Store or an alternative store.” The fee is “ruinous for any hopes of a competing store getting a foothold,” Sweeney says. And while Epic will lose money by paying the CTF for these developers, he says, “we feel like we have to be the ones breaking the logjam there.”
The company hopes the EU will take action on what it alleges is a violation of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which governs digital competition. Epic writes in its blog post that covering the fee “is not financially viable for every third party app store or for Epic long term, but we’ll do it while the European Commission investigates Apple’s non-compliance with the law.”
It’s the latest maneuver in a long-running fight between Epic and the mobile operating system developers Apple and Google. The game maker has challenged both companies over their practices in the US with mixed success, and it’s hoping that the European Union will take up its cause. The iOS Epic Games Store is EU-only because Apple has been forced to open up its ecosystem there under the DMA; it continues to say its restrictions elsewhere are meant to protect the security of its system.
Epic argues many mobile game developers aren’t on its store because Apple and Google discourage them with restrictions and fees. The company quotes anonymous game developers — their identities withheld to avoid retaliation from Apple, it says — citing the CTFas a deterrent.
Epic had far fewer installs of its mobile store since its launch than it anticipated: just 29 million at the end of 2024, it says in its blog post, compared to its goal of 100 million. It attributes this partly to friction like mobile “scare screens,” which it says drive away usersfrom installing the Epic Games Store more than 50 percent of the time.
With a doubled install base plus any network effects where users got their friends to join, “I think it would have been easy for us to get to 100 million users,” Sweeney claims. Ultimately, he adds, “We won’t really have app store freedom, even in Europe, and actual user choice and competition, unless the DMA is robustly enforced.”
Epic has been fighting this battle for a long time, with its flashy 2020 lawsuit against Apple marking a key turning point. But Sweeney is prepared for the fight to continue for the better part of this decade. Even with a new US president who looks fairly cozy with big tech, Sweeney says he’s still optimistic Donald Trump’s appointees are prepared to take on the industry.
“The ridiculous irony is that Epic Games is able to fully compete with the App Store on equal terms only in Europe,” Sweeney says. “In America, we are blocked from it. And in America, a US citizen cannot obtain Fortnite [on iOS] — it is blocked from you by Apple. I think that’s ridiculous, and that needs to change, and it will change.”
Updates, January 23rd: After we published this article, which was scheduled to publish at an Epic-provided embargo time, Epic spokesperson Natalie Munoz told The Verge that the “launch of third party games on the Epic Games Store is slightly delayed.” We’ve made small adjustments to the piece to reflect that. We’ve also added a tweet from Epic about the delay.
President Donald Trump says he’d be open to his buddies Elon Musk or Larry Ellison buying TikTok.
“Larry, let’s negotiate in front of the media,” Trump said at a press conference with the Oracle co-founder, SoftBank CEO Masa Son, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to announce a $500 billion artificial intelligence infrastructure investment. “What I’m thinking about saying to somebody is, buy it, and give half to the United States of America. Half, and we’ll give you the permit. And they’ll have a great partner, the United States.”
“Sounds like a good deal to me, Mr. President,” Ellison said.
It’s still not entirely clear how all of this would work, or how the US could legally operate a speech platform without violating the First Amendment. But it’s one of the earliest examples of how Silicon Valley’s coziness with Trump could manifest over the next four years.
Trump signed an executive order on Monday instructing his administration not to enforce the law on service providers covered by the forced divestiture bill — which include Oracle, Apple, and Google — for 75 days. But legal experts say the action provides hardly any legal cover for those companies to violate federal law and risk $850 billion in penalties. Even so, Oracle has appeared to rely on Trump’s assurances to help TikTok run in the US after the January 19th sale deadline, though the company has not yet commented on it directly.
TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance still has other offers on the table, including from billionaire Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty and now, apparently, from YouTube creator MrBeast — whose investor group is receiving legal counsel from a team that includesthe brother of Trump’s attorney general pick.
As he was leaving the briefing, a reporter asked Trump if he has TikTok on his phone. “No, but I think I might put it there,” Trump responded. “I think I’ll get it right now.”
Photo credit should read CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images
CapCut, the ByteDance-owned video editing app that’s subject to the same ban as TikTok, is working again in the US.
Users who have the app downloaded have seen a notice on Tuesday welcoming them back to the service and thanking them for their “patience and support.” The notice appears to come after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on the night after his inauguration instructing federal enforcers not to take action against service providers subject to the law for 75 days.
Screenshot by The Verge
While the order was meant to quash concerns for service providers that could face billions in fines for violating federal law and maintaining the app now that the sale deadline has passed, legal experts say it does little to actually dispense of the legal risk. Perhaps as a result, even though some of CapCut’s US service providers appear to be cooperating with Trump’s wishes to get the app back online, it still doesn’t appear in Apple or Google’s app stores — similar to TikTok.
Under the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, apps owned by China-based ByteDance were required to be sold to a non-adversary entity by January 19th to continue operating in the US. Instead of making a deal, however, the company pursued its legal options and ultimately lost at the Supreme Court. Trump is now trying to broker a “joint venture” that gives the US 50 percent ownership over TikTok to save it from the ban, though that idea also appears to have its own risky legal implications.
Brendan Carr is now formally the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, giving him the power to set the agency’s agenda and usher through a host of regulations with major implications for the tech and media industries as soon as he has a Republican majority.
In a statement, Carr named a few areas of focus: “issues ranging from tech and media regulation to unleashing new opportunities for jobs and growth through agency actions on spectrum, infrastructure, and the space economy.”
Carr’s priorities might also be gleaned from a document you might have already heard about: Project 2025. That’s because he authored the FCC chapter of the Heritage Foundation’s wishlist for a Donald Trump presidency. In that chapter, Carr proposes actions including: limiting immunity for tech companies under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, requiring disclosures about how platforms prioritize content, requiring tech companies to pay into a program that funds broadband access in rural areas, and more, quickly approving applications to launch satellites from companies like Elon Musk’s Starlink.
Carr also wrote about protecting the US from security threats stemming from China, including by addressing “TikTok’s threat to national security.” Whether that’s something Carr takes up as chair now seems more in doubt, as Trump has changed his tune on the app’s danger to the US. While Trump was the first to try to ban TikTok from the US, he’s now positioning himself as its savior — putting China and TikTok hawk Carr in a tricky position.
The new FCC chair has also indicated that he could use his power to revoke spectrum licenses for networks over their decisions to host speech when he deems it a violation of the equal time rule. This came up in a scuffle about NBC’s hosting of Kamala Harris on Saturday Night Live before the election — though the network seemed to comply with the rules for giving candidates similar time and placement on public airwaves by offering Trump an appearance on air later on.
Regardless, Carr will need a third Republican vote on the commission to approve any measures that are not bipartisan in nature. Trump has nominated Olivia Trusty, a former Senate aide, to join the commission, pending Senate confirmation.
Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Trade Commission is also now in place. Andrew Ferguson, who was already serving as a commissioner, has a reported agenda that echoes parts of Carr’s. It includes a desire to “hold big tech accountable and stop censorship” and also to “protect freedom of speech and fight wokeness.”
Correction, January 21st: An earlier version of this article said Mark Meador had been nominated to join Carr. Meador has been nominated to join the FTC, not the FCC.
Donald Trump has been officially sworn in as the 47th president of the US. Although we’ve already experienced a Trump presidency beginning in 2016, this term could look far different than the first one, particularly when it comes to tech regulation.
The heads of major tech companies have apparently come to learn how to deal with Trump, following an era of techlash that invited fury against them from both sides. The executives — who mostly stayed at arm’s distance during the beginning of Trump’s first term — have been quick to get into Trump’s good graces, be it with trips to Mar-a-Lago, attendance at the inauguration, changes to their company policies, or notices to millions of users thanking Trump for his (predicted) role in getting their popular social media app back online.
There’s good reason for the CEOs to cozy up to Trump. The next four years could see the president’s choices impact their companies and workers in a laundry list of areas. We’ll be looking at:
How Trump handles tariffs against countries including China, where tech companies like Apple assemble many of their goods
Whether Trump deploys the US surveillance state (as well as companies’ own data collection efforts) to carry out promises of mass deportations
The future of global attempts to fight climate change with likely reduced help from the US
Trump has said he’ll use his first afternoon back in the Oval Office to sign “dozens of executive orders.” They’re expected to cover border policy, the environment, trade, and possibly even a delay to the TikTok ban. If it’s anything like the first term, we’ll see many of those challenged in court — and the results will indicate just how much of a check Trump will have on his power this time around.
At a victory rally the day before being sworn into the presidency, Donald Trump extolled his plan to “save TikTok” from the law that banned it through a joint venture with the US.
On its face, the plan does not appear to comply with the law’s requirements for a qualified divestiture that TikTok’s service providers like Apple, Google, and Oracle could rely on to avoid hundreds of billions in potential fines. Even so, at least some of TikTok’s service providers seem to be relying on Trump’s flimsy promises, allowing TikTok to restore service to the app mid-day Sunday, on the first day of its ban.
Trump is proposing a joint venture where the US government owns 50 percent of TikTok. That raises a host of its own First Amendment issues since any content moderation whatsoever might be considered a government act, and the Constitution prohibits the government (not private companies) from infringing on speech.
It’s not entirely clear how Trump envisions this all playing out, but Trump says, essentially, that TikTok would have a “partner” in the US government, “and they’ll have a lot of bidders and the United States will do what we call a joint venture.” Trump claims there is “no risk” to the US because “we’re not putting up any money. All we’re doing is giving them the approval without which they don’t have anything. So, I don’t know, it sounds like that works.”
Trump also reinforced the idea that the whole reason he likes TikTok is because he thinks it helped his campaign. He credited his 21-year-old staffer, nicknamed “TikTok Jack,” for helping him get on the app that helped him win over young voters.
And though the stated purpose of forcing TikTok to divest from its parent company ByteDance (a move Trump himself first tried to do in his first term) was to remove a possible backdoor for the Chinese government to US data, he now says that “frankly, we have no choice, we have to save it — a lot of jobs. We don’t wanna give our business to China.”
Here’s Trump’s full comments on TikTok during the rally:
And as of today, TikTok is back. So, you know, I did a little TikTok thing we have a guy, TikTok Jack he’s a young kid, like 21 years old. And we hired this guy, and I went on TikTok; can you believe what I’ll do to win an election?And we went on TikTok and Republicans have never won the young vote, the youth vote. They win a lot of votes, but they never won the youth vote. We won the youth vote by 36 points. So I like TikTok. I like it. I had a slightly good experience wouldn’t you say?
Romney lost it by 40 points not so long ago. We won it by 36 points. That’s a very big spread.But I said, we need to save TikTok, because we’re talking about a tremendous — who, who in this audience goes with TikTok? Many? Yeah, very popular. And frankly, we have no choice, we have to save it — a lot of jobs. We don’t wanna give our business to China, we don’t wanna give our business to other people. And I said, you know, TikTok without my approval — meaning the president’s approval because Congress gave the president the right to make a deal to whatever he wants and uh… they did that a long time ago when they have a different president. They didn’t know that I was gonna be at the president, I guess.
So I said very simply, a joint venture. So, if TikTok is worth nothing, zero without an approval, you know you don’t approve, they’re out of business, they’re worth nothing.
If you do approve, they’re worth like a trillion dollars, they’re worth some crazy number. So I said, I’ll approve, but let the United States of America own 50% of TikTok.I’m approving on behalf of the United States.
So they’ll have a partner, the United States, and they’ll have a lot of bidders and the United States will do what we call a joint venture. And there’s no risk, we’re not putting up any money. All we’re doing is giving them the approval without which they don’t have anything. So, I don’t know, it sounds like that works. What do you think, good? So, whether you like TikTok or not, we’re gonna make a lot of money.
No matter what TikTok says in its laudatory pop-up messages, President-elect Donald Trump cannot simply declare an extension of the TikTok ban deadline and protect American companies that support it from billions of dollars in fines.
Trump seems to want TikTok available for his inauguration on Monday, because “Americans deserve” to see the event. But TikTok is officially banned starting today until it sells to a non-Chinese company, and there’s no deal in sight. Flouting that ban could get Apple and Google’s app stores, as well as service providers Akamai and Oracle, dinged for potentially $850 billion in penalties. Despite all this, Trump has reportedly assured companies they won’t face these fines if they let TikTok keep operating. Now, the question is simple: will Trump-friendly companies risk breaking the law to make the president happy?
TikTok’s status has been uncertain since last night. President Joe Biden said he wouldn’t enforce the law on the last day of his presidency, but TikTok declared it would go dark anyway. App stores removed it in accordance with the law. Then, Trump promised he’d extend the deadline, telling companies they wouldn’t face penalties — and TikTok...
Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images
President-elect Donald Trump says he wants service providers like Apple and Google to put TikTok back online in the US, and he proposed creating a joint venture where the US owns 50 percent of the app.
“I’m asking companies not to let TikTok stay dark!” Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday. “I will issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security. The order will also confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order.”
Part of the motivation appears to be his own inauguration on Monday, which Trump says “Americans deserve to see.” He called the joint venture idea an “initial thought” and said “by doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to say up. Without U.S. approval, there is no Tik Tok. With our approval, it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars - maybe trillions.”
Shortly after the ban took effect, Republican lawmakers poured cold water on the idea that Donald Trump will be able to halt the TikTok ban without a sale of the app when he resumes the presidency Monday. Trump had previously floated exercising a 90-day extension written into the law to lengthen the deadline for a sale and reportedly considered issuing an executive order.
“We will enforce the law,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “When President Trump issued the Truth post and said, ‘save TikTok,’ the way we read that is that he’s going to try to force along a true divestiture.” Johnson added that “the only way to extend that is if there’s an actual deal in the works.”
“Now that the law has taken effect, there’s no legal basis for any kind of ‘extension’ of its effective date,” Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Pete Ricketts (R-NE) said in a statement. “For TikTok to come back online in the future, ByteDance must agree to a sale that satisfies the law’s qualified-divestiture requirements by severing all ties between TikTok and Communist China.”
With Trump’s Republican allies in Congress casting doubt on the idea that a pause on the ban is viable without a bona fide deal that rids TikTok of its foreign adversary ownership, it’s unlikely that service providers like Apple and Google will risk the billions in fines they could face should a court rule that Trump is wrong about his powers to halt the law.
But creating a joint venture where the US owns 50 percent of a speech platform comes with its own potential First Amendment concerns. And Johnson’s comments on Meet the Press about why lawmakers are concerned about the app to begin with further demonstrate that Congress did think about the content on the platform when deciding to pass the law — even though the Supreme Court didn’t see that as reason to find it unconstitutional. “They have been flooding the minds of American children with terrible messages glorifying violence and antisemitism and even suicide and eating disorders,” Johnson says. “It’s a very dangerous thing. The Chinese Communist Party is not our friend, and we have to make sure this changes hands.”
The Supreme Court couldn’t have been more direct: the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, as applied to TikTok, withstands First Amendment scrutiny and can take effect on January 19th. The court agreed that the government had a compelling national security interest in passing the law and that its rationale was content neutral. The solution proposed — forcing Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest TikTok or see it ousted from the US — was ruled appropriately tailored to meet those ends.
Yet the government’s response hardly feels like a victory lap. In fact, despite being still under ByteDance’s control, it’s not clear that anyone in the US government will even act like TikTok is banned on the 19th.
“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,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement after the Supreme Court ruling today. “Given...
In his first statement since the Supreme Court upheld a law that could ban TikTok from the US on Sunday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew offered no insight into what would happen to the app in just a few days. Instead, he took the opportunity to appeal to President-elect Donald Trump.
“I want to thank President Trump for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States,” Chew says in a video on the platform. “We are grateful and pleased to have the support of a President who truly understands our platform — one who has used TikTok to express his own thoughts and perspectives, connecting with the world and generating more than 60 billion views of his content in the process.”
In discussing Trump’s TikTok views, Chew is speaking his language. After all, the incoming president is famous for keeping close tabs on his TV ratings and recently declared he had a “warm spot” for TikTok after seeing how the platform played a role in his campaign. It’s TikTok’s most public attempt to butter Trump up before he takes over the Oval Office on Monday (one day after the ban takes effect), but Chew has already visited him at Mar-a-Lago and plans to attend his inauguration, along with several other tech CEOs.
Trump has previously declared his intention to save TikTok but has not said how he’d do so. After Friday’s Supreme Court ruling, he asked the public to “respect it” and said, “My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation.” Earlier on Friday, he said he’d spoken with China’s President Xi Jinping about TikTok, among other things, calling it a “very good” call.
Chew’s statement seems to indicate that TikTok believes appealing to Trump is now its most promising path to remaining viable in the US. Even so, Trump’s options are somewhat limited. The most effective path, if he could achieve it, would be to somehow broker a deal to get ByteDance (with China’s allowance) to sell TikTok and comply with the law’s divestiture requirements. Otherwise, he could instruct his Justice Department not to enforce the ban, possibly through an executive order — but that might not be enough to reassure companies like Apple, Google, and Oracle that they won’t risk serious penalties by continuing to provide service for TikTok.
In the meantime, we still don’t know how TikTok itself will handle the impending ban, which takes effect the day before Trump is sworn in. The company has reportedly planned to go dark in the US in that case. “Rest assured, we will do everything in our power to ensure our platform thrives as your online home for limitless creativity and discovery, as well as a source of inspiration and joy for years to come,” Chew says. “More to come.”
The Supreme Court ruled that the law that could oust TikTok from the US unless Chinese parent company ByteDance sells it is constitutional as applied to the company.
“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,” the court wrote in a per curiam ruling, which is not attributed to any particular justice. “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.”
The ruling means that TikTok is still on track to be banned in the US on January 19th, unless President Joe Biden extends the deadline or ByteDance manages to sell the company in time. The Biden administration now appears poised to hold off on enforcement and leave it to the next administration once President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in on Monday — though even that promise might not be enough to overcome the risk service providers like Apple, Google, and Oracle could face if they choose not to comply with the law by continuing to service TikTok once the ban technically takes effect.
Trump has said he’d try to save the app, though it’s not clear how — and he won’t be sworn into office until a day after the sale deadline. The app won’t just disappear from users’ phones; TikTok has reportedly planned to go beyond the law’s requirements and go dark should the ban be upheld.
The justices caution that their ruling should be “understood to be narrowly focused” given that the case involves “new technologies with transformative capabilities.” They emphasized that even though it’s common for companies to collect data, “TikTok’s scale and susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects, justify differential treatment to address the Government’s national security concerns. A law targeting any other speaker would by necessity entail a distinct inquiry and separate considerations.” Ultimately, the government “had good reason to single out TikTok for special treatment.”
The justices found that the law as applied to TikTok is “content neutral” and “justified by a content neutral rationale,” citing the government’s concern over the alleged potential for China to collect vast amounts of data on Americans through the app. They found that the law does not need to satisfy the highest possible form of First Amendment scrutiny and that, as applied to TikTok, it does satisfy intermediate scrutiny because the law furthers “an important Government interest unrelated to the suppression of free expression” and doesn’t burden much more speech than necessary to accomplish that.
The court was not swayed by TikTok’s assurances that the Chinese government was “unlikely” to “compel TikTok to turn over user data for intelligence-gathering purposes, since China has more effective and efficient means of obtaining relevant information.” The justices said that even if China had not already sought to use ByteDance’s relationship with TikTok to access US data, TikTok didn’t offer any good reason for the court to conclude that the US government’s determination that China might seek to exploit that relationship “is not at least a ‘reasonable inferenc[e] based on substantial evidence.’” In the end, the justices afforded a great deal of deference to the government’s assessments, noting, for example, “We are especially wary of parsing Congress’s motives on this record with regard to an Act passed with striking bipartisan support.”
There are some buyers waiting in the wings for this ruling, hoping it will change ByteDance’s calculus on a sale. Billionaire Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty, for example, wants to buy the app without the algorithm to run on its own social network protocol. But it’s still not clear if China would allow a sale, even without the coveted algorithm — perhaps betting that the US will eventually relent or that it can continue to thrive in other countries around the world. Still, reports this week indicate that might be starting to change, as unnamed sources told several outlets that Chinese officials were mulling the idea of getting billionaire Elon Musk to act either as a buyer or broker of a potential deal.
The case pitted free expression and national security concerns against each other. The justices heard oral arguments in the case last Friday, where lawyers for TikTok and a group of creators on the platform described why they believe the law would violate the First Amendment. The US government defended the law, which was passed overwhelmingly by Congress and signed by Biden, as important to national security.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch offered their own statements, concurring in the final judgment. Sotomayor disagreed that the court need not determine that the law implicates the First Amendment because she thinks it’s obvious it does. Even so, she agrees that the law can survive such scrutiny.
Gorsuch points out the unusual speed of the case, writing that, “We have had a fortnight to resolve, finally and on the merits, a major First Amendment dispute affecting more than 170 million Americans.” He writes that he’s “pleased” the court did not consider the classified evidence presented to Congress to justify the law in this case, writing that, “Efforts to inject secret evidence into judicial proceedings present obvious constitutional concerns.”
Gorsuch also says he has “serious reservations” about whether the law is actually content neutral, though he finds the government’s interest compelling and the law appropriately tailored to meet its goals. Whether it will actually do so is another matter, he points out. “A determined foreign adversary may just seek to replace one lost surveillance application with another. As time passes and threats evolve, less dramatic and more effective solutions may emerge. Even what might happen next to TikTok remains unclear,” Gorsuch writes. “But the question we face today is not the law’s wisdom, only its constitutionality. 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.”
The Biden administration says it will leave it to incoming President Donald Trump to figure out how to deal with the mess of the TikTok ban, ABC News reports.
“Our position on this has been clear: TikTok should continue to operate under American ownership,” a White House official told ABC News. “Given the timing of when it goes into effect over a holiday weekend a day before inauguration, it will be up to the next administration to implement.”
But don’t get too excited just yet. Even though Trump has offered vague promises to save TikTok, there’s still not much he can do to eliminate the huge monetary risk companies like Apple and Google could face so long as the law is on the books. And for that matter, the same goes for Biden — unless he formally extends the timeline for a sale of TikTok by Chinese owner ByteDance by up to 90 days before the ban take effect.
The White House statement to ABC does not appear to suggest that Biden plans to take that route, and the Biden administration did not immediately respond to The Verge’s request for clarification. But technically, to grant an extension, Biden would need to see progress toward a sale. So far, according to multiple reports, ByteDance has been focused on fighting the law, rather than exploring potential buyers. Even so, a handful of Democratic lawmakers led by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) — who is trying to get Congress to extend the deadline — pleaded in a letter to Biden to use the 90 day extension.
While TikTok itself is not mandated by the law to shut down, it may still choose to go dark as it’s reportedly planned if it fears its US service providers including Oracle might choose not to risk helping it operate or update. TikTok, Oracle, Apple, and Google have not yet said publicly how they plan to handle Sunday’s deadline. We also still haven’t heard from the Supreme Court — which seemed poised to uphold the law and just said on Thursdaythat it “may announce opinions” at 10AM ET on Friday — but since it’s so far declined to pause it, the ban will at least technically take effect on Sunday, whether or not anyone else chooses to do something about it.
Chinese officials are reportedly exploring a backup plan for TikTok after the Supreme Court appeared unlikely to save it from a US ban.With TikTok’s legal options nearly exhausted, multiple news outlets are reporting that China is considering an option it previously said it wouldn’t: letting ByteDance sell the app.
The kicker? China is reportedly mulling having President-elect Donald Trump’s favorite tech billionaire, Elon Musk, act either as broker or buyer in the arrangement. Reports from the Financial Times,Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg — all citing unnamed sources — indicate that Chinese officials are at least discussing the option of a sale. TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes has called the reports “pure fiction.” The Chinese embassy in the US and Musk’s existing social media company, X, did not respond to requests for comment.
Plenty of people have expressed interest in buying TikTok at this point, from ”Shark Tank” celebrity Kevin O’Leary to YouTuber Mr. Beast. The problem has not been a lack of buyers — though obvious ones like Meta and Google would likely be barred by antirust authorities — but reluctant sellers. The new reporting suggests that the Chinese...
TikTok’s luck might not run out just yet, if a new bill extending its January 19th deadline for a sale is approved by Congress.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), announced on the Senate floor Monday that he plans to introduce the Extend the TikTok Deadline Act to give the company an extra 270 days to divest from its Chinese parent company ByteDance to avoid facing a ban in the US. The bill notably wouldn’t overturn Congress’ initial bill, but it would give the company more time to make a deal, as its legal options dry out. The Supreme Court is expected to decide this week whether the initial law, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, violates the First Amendment, as applied to TikTok — but many court-watchers predict the ruling is unlikely to go in TikTok’s favor.
Markey voted to approve the initial law, which was included in a foreign aid package before the Senate. And in his remarks on the floor Monday, he acknowledged that “TikTok has its problems.” But, he said, “a TikTok ban would impose serious consequences on millions of Americans who depend on the app for social connections and their economic livelihood. We cannot allow that to happen.”
The Senator filed an amicus brief in late December — alongside Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) — with the Supreme Court in support of TikTok and its creators, arguing the law does not stand up to First Amendment scrutiny. “Its principal justification—preventing covert content manipulation by the Chinese government— reflects a desire to control the content on the TikTok platform and in any event could be achieved through a less restrictive alternative,” they argued in the brief. “And its secondary justification of protecting users’ data from the Chinese government could not sustain the ban on its own and also overlooks that Congress did not consider whether less drastic mitigation measures could address those concerns.”
Even if Congress takes up the deadline extension, ByteDance will face the same decision it does now in less than a year: whether it can or wants to sell TikTok. While prospective buyers have expressed interest, it’s still unclear if the Chinese government would be willing to sell it — although some recent reporting suggests they’re at least considering the option.
