On Monday, US President-elect Donald Trump met with TikTok’s CEO as the social media behemoth opposes US authorities’ attempts to ban it.
According to people familiar with the encounter, the BBC’s US partner CBS News said that Trump met Shou Zi Chew on Monday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
According to a regulation passed earlier this year, TikTok will be shut down unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sells it before January 19.
The business has petitioned the US Supreme Court urgently to postpone the prohibition.
Due to purported ties between ByteDance and the Chinese government—links that both TikTok and ByteDance have consistently denied—the US wants TikTok to be sold or blocked.
“Protect the national security of the United States from the threat posed by foreign adversary controlled applications,” according to the bill that introduced the law.
Trump is against the ban, even though he supported one during his first term, in part because he believes it could benefit Facebook, which he has accused of helping him lose the 2020 election.
The day following the law’s deadline, on January 20, Trump will be inaugurated, marking the start of his second term.
In its filing to the Supreme Court, submitted on Monday, TikTok asked for a “modest delay” to the enforcement of the ban to “create breathing room” for a review by the Court and to allow the incoming administration to “evaluate this matter”.
It described TikTok as “one of the most significant speech platforms” in the US and said the ban would do “immediate irreparable harm” to the company and its users.
Earlier this month, the company’s bid to have the ban overturned was rejected by the federal appeals court, which found that the law was the “culmination of extensive, bipartisan action by the Congress and by successive presidents”.