Supreme Court delays TikTok decision

The U.S. Supreme Court has yet to make a decision on TikTok. However, it was poised Friday to uphold a law that would force TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the popular digital platform.

Most of the justices were skeptical, AFP reports, of arguments by a TikTok lawyer claiming that a forced sale was a violation of free speech rights established in the First Amendment of the Constitution.

Several judges countered by pointing out that it was owned by China, an avowed enemy of the United States.

In the midst of a strategic standoff between the United States and China, Congress passed this law in April by a large majority. The U.S. government alleges that TikTok allows Beijing to collect data and spy on users, and that it is a means of spreading propaganda.

China and ByteDance strongly deny these allegations.

The law, signed by President Joe Biden, sets Jan. 19 as the deadline for the social network's parent company, ByteDance, to sell the platform.

Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump has come out in favor of keeping the platform operating in the country. He recently assured that he has no intention of shutting down TikTok in the United States.

"Why would I want to get rid of TikTok?" Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. He accompanied the message with an image showing the statistics of his account.

According to the image posted by the president-elect, his personal account has received 1.4 billion total views on the video-sharing app and records 24 million views per post on average.