The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States is an inter-agency committee in the United States government that reviews the national security implications of foreign investments in the U.S. economy.
The International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), Title II of Pub. L. 95–223, 91 Stat. 1626, enacted October 28, 1977, is a United States federal law authorizing the president to regulate international commerce after declaring a national emergency in response to any unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States. The act was signed by President Jimmy Carter on December 28, 1977.
PT Tokopedia is an Indonesian e-commerce company. Tokopedia is a subsidiary of a new holding company called GoTo, following a merger with Gojek on 17 May 2021. It is one of the most visited e-commerce platforms in Indonesia.
ByteDance Ltd. is a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Haidian, Beijing and incorporated in the Cayman Islands.
TikTok, known in mainland China and Hong Kong as Douyin, is a short-form video-hosting service owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which may range in duration from three seconds to 60 minutes. It can be accessed both through a mobile app or through its website.
Carl John Nichols is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and a judge of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Zhang Yiming is a Chinese Internet entrepreneur. He founded ByteDance in 2012, developed the news aggregator Toutiao and the video sharing platform Douyin. Zhang is one of the richest individuals in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$45.6 billion as of October 2024, according to Forbes and US$43.1 billion according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index. On 4 November 2021, Zhang stepped down as CEO of ByteDance, completing a leadership handover announced in May 2021. According to Reuters, Zhang maintains over 50 percent of ByteDance's voting rights. The surging global popularity of TikTok made Zhang the richest man in China in 2024.
Triller is an American video-sharing social networking service that was first released for iOS and Android in 2015. The service allows users to create and share short-form videos, including videos set to, or automatically synchronized to, music using artificial intelligence technology. It initially operated as a video editing app before adding social networking features.
U.S. WeChat Users Alliance (USWUA) v. Trump was a court case pending before the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The plaintiffs won a preliminary injunction on September 20, 2020, blocking the Trump administration's ban order against WeChat based on concerns raised about harm to First Amendment rights and the hardships imposed on a minority community using the app as a primary means of communication. The lawsuit was dismissed in July 2021, following the Biden Administration's rescission of the executive order.
TikTok v. Trump was a lawsuit before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia filed in September 2020 by TikTok as a challenge to President Donald Trump's executive order of August 6, 2020. The order prohibited the usage of TikTok in five stages, the first being the prohibition of downloading the application. On September 27, 2020, a preliminary injunction was issued by Judge Carl J. Nichols blocking enforcement of that executive order. The lawsuit, by then captioned TikTok v. Biden, was dismissed in July 2021, following the Biden Administration's rescission of the executive order.
Many countries have imposed past or ongoing restrictions on the short-form video-hosting service TikTok. Bans from government devices usually stem from national security concerns over potential access of data by the Chinese government. Other bans have cited children's well-being and offensive content such as pornography. There are also free speech concerns about TikTok ban.
In 2020, the United States government announced that it was considering banning the Chinese social media platform TikTok upon a request from Donald Trump, the president of the United States, who viewed the app as a national security threat. The result was that the parent company of TikTok, ByteDance—which initially planned on selling a small portion of TikTok to an American company—agreed to divest TikTok to prevent a ban in the United States and in other countries where restrictions are also being considered due to privacy concerns, which themselves are mostly related to its ownership by a firm based in China.
CapCut, known in China as JianYing and formerly internationally as ViaMaker, is a Chinese short-form video editing app developed by ByteDance.
Shou Zi Chew is a Singaporean business executive who has been the chief executive officer (CEO) of TikTok, an online video platform owned by Chinese company ByteDance, since 2021.
The short-form video-hosting service TikTok has been under a de jure nationwide ban in the United States since January 19, 2025, due to the US government's concerns over potential user data collection and influence operations by the government of the People's Republic of China. The ban took effect after ByteDance, the China-based parent company of TikTok, refused to sell the service before the deadline of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. Prior to the ban, individual states, cities, universities, and government-affiliated devices had restricted TikTok.
The RESTRICT Act was a proposed law that was first introduced in the United States Senate on March 7, 2023. Introduced by Senator Mark Warner, the Act proposed that the Secretary of Commerce be given the power to review business transactions involving certain information and communications technologies products or services when they are connected to a "foreign adversary" of the United States, and pose an "undue and unacceptable risk" to the national security of the United States or its citizens.
Lemon8 is a social media app owned by Heliophilia Pte. Ltd., a Singaporean company connected to the Chinese internet company ByteDance. It was launched in 2020 and modeled after Xiaohongshu, which was released in 2013.
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA) is an act of Congress that was signed into law on April 24, 2024, as part of Public Law 118-50. It would ban social networking services within 270 days if they are determined by the president of the United States and relevant provisions to be a "foreign adversary controlled application", with a possible extension of up to 90 days to be granted by the president; the definition covers websites and application software, including mobile apps. The act explicitly applies to ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiaries—including TikTok—without the need for additional determination, with the company to become compliant by January 19, 2025. It ceases to be applicable if the foreign adversary controlled application is divested and no longer considered to be controlled by a foreign adversary of the United States.
TikTok has been involved in a number of lawsuits since its founding, with a number of them relating to TikTok's data collection techniques.
TikTok, Inc. v. Garland, 604 U.S. ___ (2025), was a United States Supreme Court case brought by ByteDance Ltd. and TikTok on the constitutionality of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA) based on the Freedom of Speech Clause of the First Amendment, the Bill of Attainder Clause of Article One, Section Nine, and the Due Process Clause and Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The case was consolidated with Firebaugh v. Garland, a lawsuit filed by TikTok content creators against the law.
