TikTok says US 'misstated' app's ties to China ahead of appeals court date

Platform is seeking to overturn law that could impose ban on app unless ByteDance sells US assets

The US Justice Department has said TikTok poses a national security threat. AFP

TikTok told a US federal appeals court on Thursday that the Department of Justice has misstated the platform's ties to China and urged the court to overturn a law requiring China-based ByteDance to sell TikTok's US assets or face a ban.

TikTok, which has sued to overturn the law, said the department made factual errors in the case. The department's lawyers said last month that the app posed a national security threat by allowing the Chinese government to collect the data of users in the US and covertly manipulate what content they saw.

"It misstates where sensitive US user data resides – not in China, but in the secure Oracle cloud," TikTok said, according US court documents. "It admits it has no evidence that China has ever accessed US user data."

The law, signed by President Joe Biden on April 24, gives ByteDance until January 19 next year to sell TikTok or face a ban. The White House said it wanted to Chinese-based ownership to end on national security grounds.

The appeals court will hold oral arguments on the legal challenge on September 16. That means TikTok's fate could be decided during the final weeks of the November 5 presidential election.

Republican candidate and former US president Donald Trump has joined TikTok and said in June he would never support a ban on the app.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, joined TikTok in July. Social media has been an important part of her campaign.

TikTok argued on Thursday that the law would strip the company of its free speech rights. It opposed the Justice Department's claim that the app's content curation decisions are "the speech of a foreigner" and are not protected by the US Constitution.

"By the government's logic, a US newspaper that republishes the content of a foreign publication – Reuters, for example – would lack constitutional protection," TikTok said.

The law prohibits app stores including Apple and Google from offering TikTok and bars internet hosting services from supporting the platform unless it is divested by ByteDance.

US legislators have raised concerns that China could access user data or spy on them using the app. Congress overwhelmingly passed the measure weeks after it was introduced.