TikTok

With roughly one month until the “ban” phase of the US TikTok “divest or ban” law, TikTok’s making a last-ditch appeal to the Supreme Court:

The same three judges who ruled last week that a TikTok divest-or-ban law is Constitutional ruled against the company again today and declined to temporarily pause it from taking effect on January 19th.

Leaders of the House panel that led the divest-or-ban bill against TikTok warned the CEOs to be ready to comply once the bill takes effect — assuming it’s not stopped before then. The warning comes after a federal court ruled the bill is constitutional. Under the law, app marketplaces could get in trouble for letting users download the app.

The Canadian government ordered the shutdown of TikTok’s Canadian operations last month, though the shutdown wouldn’t bar Canadians from using the app.

TikTok is running out of time and legal recourse to avoid a US ban unless its China-based parent company ByteDance sells it. Here’s the tl;dr on why a three-judge panel unanimously ruled to uphold the law that could expel TikTok, and what comes next.

The company announced today it’s opening up its AI ads tool to all advertisers — so prepare to see more AI content on your feed.

Well, four people close to Trump say he’s going to try and stop it from happening, reports the Washington Post. It’s unclear what, exactly, that means. TikTok faces a ban unless its parent company, ByteDance, sells it by January 19th — the day before Trump’s inauguration.

“Social media is doing harm to our kids and I’m calling time on it,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said. “The onus will be on social media platforms to demonstrate they are taking reasonable steps to prevent access. The onus won’t be on parents or young people. There’ll be no penalties for users.”

Industry minister François-Philippe Champagne says the government is acting “to address the specific national security risks related to ByteDance Ltd.’s operations in Canada.”

The Information reports that TikTok’s parent company ByteDance grew its overall revenue to $73 billion in the first half of 2024 — just shy of Meta’s $75.5 billion. The share of ByteDance’s revenue that comes from TikTok grew to 23 percent, meaning its operations outside of China are increasingly important for the company’s bottom line.

The company is adding a STEM feed for all US, Great Britain, and Ireland-based users that surfaces technology and science content. The feed itself isn’t new, but now it will be enabled by default.

If you thought standard-issue ad tech was a little weird and creepy, get ready for the future: platforms letting marketers use all their data to make an infinite number of AI-generated ads specifically targeted to individual viewers. Digiday reports on TikTok’s Smart+, which competes with similar offerings from Meta and Google:

State Attorney General Ken Paxton alleges that TikTok has violated the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act by not giving parents control of their kids’ privacy and account settings, writes Reuters. TikTok denied the allegations in a statement to The Texas Tribune.

The service will be shut down on November 28th according to a post on the streaming site, with subscription renewals being automatically canceled.

TikTok’s subscriptions feature is rolling out to eligible non-Live creators. The platform first launched its Twitch-like subscriptions in 2022, but it was only available to TikTokers who livestream.

Judge Sri Srinivasan brought up the Supreme Court’s decisions in NetChoice and another case, Murthy v. Missouri, while questioning DOJ attorney Daniel Tenny.

Attorney Daniel Tenny frames the government’s objection to TikTok. “It gathers a lot of information” and “it uses that information to try to assess what sorts of videos and other content is going to be of interest,” Tenny says. “That same data is extremely valuable to a foreign adversary.”

A report from The Information details the China-based ByteDance’s plans to mass produce two new AI chips by 2026 with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). The move would help ByteDance save “billions of dollars” as opposed to buying chips from Nvidia.

TikTok’s lawyer is off the stage, and Judge Noemi Rao is questioning Jeffrey Fisher, who represents a lawsuit from users of TikTok. Fisher’s argument so far centers on the claim that American media creators have a right to work with publishers of their choosing. Rao is questioning how far that right should stretch — emphasizing the judges’ focus on TikTok’s Chinese ownership.