US Supreme Court upholds law banning TikTok

The justices unanimously ruled that the law did not violate the US Constitution's First Amendment protection against government abridgement of free speech

TikTok is one of the most prominent social media platforms in the United States, used by about 270 million Americans - roughly half the country's population, including many young people

The US Supreme Court refused to rescue TikTok on Friday from a law that required the popular short-video app to be sold by its Chinese parent company ByteDance or banned on Sunday in the United States on national security grounds - a major blow to a platform used by nearly half of all Americans.

The justices unanimously ruled that the law, passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in Congress last year and signed by US President Joe Biden, did not violate the US Constitution's First Amendment protection against government abridgement of free speech. The justices affirmed a lower court's decision that had upheld the measure after it was challenged by TikTok, ByteDance and some of the app's users.