The US ban on Chinese apps WeChat and TikTok poses a major legal challenge to respect for digital freedom of expression, with potentially major ramifications for the global internet.
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The Trump administration justified this decision on national security concerns: these successful platforms are or could be used for Chinese espionage because they are “subject to forced cooperation with the intelligence services” in Beijing.
While the security risks are not clear, with Washington never making tangible evidence public, a sweeping ban on online platforms immediately raised concerns about the possibility of the government intervening to regulate freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
“It is a mistake to think that it is (only) a sanction against TikTok and WeChat”, opines Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which defends the freedoms of expression and the press in the digital age.
“This is a serious restriction on the First Amendment rights of US citizens and residents,” he said.
Hina Shamsi, of the American Civil Liberties Union, calls this decision an “abuse of emergency powers” by President Donald Trump, which risks creating more security problems than it solves by blocking application patches and updates.
Limited functionality
The ban, which is due to go into effect Sunday, will block new downloads from TikTok, a popular video app with some 100 million users in the United States.
It will also affect WeChat, a Chinese application used for messaging, shopping, payments and other services, with some 19 million users on US soil.
WeChat functionality will be immediately affected although some services may still be working.
TikTok should continue to operate, but only until November 12 and in a degraded manner since its users will no longer be able, for example, to download updates.
The move increases pressure on TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to strike a deal with an American partner.
Silicon Valley giant Oracle is currently in talks to be part of a group that would bring TikTok under US control.
Fragmentation
This ban could further crack the global internet system, allowing governments to control services by blocking them.
“Trump’s move is likely to further break the internet,” said Darrell West, director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution.
According to him, this will encourage other countries “to fight back against US companies and raise their own security concerns against foreign companies.”
Ultimately, the internet could have different faces depending on the country of origin, he says.
Legal remedies have already been filed by TikTok and by WeChat users in the United States.
For Vanessa Pappas, the interim director of TikTok, this case goes well beyond the sole platform.
“I truly believe this moment will have a profound impact on our industry and on the shaping of the internet for years to come,” she said in a tweet.
Robert Chesney, professor of constitutional law at the University of Texas, expects a difficult legal battle.
However, he recalls that the courts have generally authorized presidents to exercise emergency powers to impose economic embargoes.
In this case, there is “an element falling under the First Amendment” but the bans announced on Friday relate to “certain business operations subject to a national security review,” he told AFP.
In other words, “apps have the right to freedom of expression but that doesn’t give them the right to create a business using American infrastructure,” he said.