TikTok just had the most important two hours of its life

CNN —

Who really controls TikTok’s magical algorithm — the US-based company that runs the app or its Chinese parent, ByteDance?

That’s the question that bedeviled a trio of federal judges on Monday charged with deciding whether to allow the implementation of a law that could ultimately result in TikTok being banned for all Americans.

After more than two hours of oral argument between TikTok and a group of content creators on one side, and the US government on the other, it remains uncertain how the judges may rule. Today wasn’t the slam dunk that TikTok needed as all three judges asked some very skeptical questions about the ByteDance relationship, but they didn’t let the government off easy, either.

Struggling to find historical and metaphorical precedent, the judges at a federal appeals court in Washington grappled with how TikTok’s foreign ownership affects its constitutional rights under US law.

They leaned on analogies about terrorist propaganda and hypotheticals about a possible shooting war involving the United States and China. They looked to a past case about communist propaganda delivered through the US Postal Service. And some of the Supreme Court’s most recent landmark decisions about online speech, issued just this year, made an appearance, too.

If the law in question targeted only US-based companies, “there’s no doubt that would be a huge First Amendment concern,” said Sri Srinivasan, chief judge of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, citing a pair of cases decided by the Supreme Court this summer.

But, he added, that isn’t the situation here. Instead, Congress passed a law that targets a US company’s foreign owners and their influence over the algorithm that 170 million