The US Supreme Court has unanimously decided to uphold the law banning TikTok in the United States as of Sunday, unless the social network is sold by ByteDance, the Beijing-based parent company, to an investor outside China by then.

According to a publication in the Portuguese newspaper BusinessIn a last-ditch attempt to keep the app running in what is one of its biggest markets, with more than 170 million users, TikTok and ByteDance Ltd appealed to the Supreme Court, but the verdict, handed down by seven judges this Friday, was somewhat expected.

The regulation, approved by the US Congress last April, gave China's ByteDance nine months to find an investor from a country that was not considered an "adversary" of the United States. US lawmakers justified the decision by arguing that the short video platform poses a threat to national security due to the possibility of the Chinese government having access to user data.

China has repeatedly criticized the US "crackdown" on TikTok, saying that it is "an intimidation tactic" that will ultimately "backfire" on the US and TikTok was the subject of a telephone conversation on Friday between President-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The Chinese state has preferential class shares in ByteDance that give it veto rights over any decision.

So, if the sale doesn't happen and there are no clues that something is imminent, the closure of TikTok in the US will take place just one day before the return of Donald Trump, who takes office on January 20th.

Donald Trump argued during the campaign that "TikTok should not be banned in the US", pointing out that "doing so would go against freedom of expression, and that's not what the US stands for", in an effort to capture the vote of young people, TikTok's main users, after he tried to force ByteDance to sell the app during his previous term.

(Photo DR)