In a historic development, Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok has become the center of a bipartisan bill to ban the app nationwide in the name of national security. Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the UC Berkeley School of Information and a prominent scholar in the study of state censorship,

TikTok isn’t the villain here. It’s a symptom of a much larger issue: the lack of clear, enforceable rules for data privacy and security. Instead of banning the app, the government should focus on fixing the system.

As self-described " TikTok refugees" pour onto the Chinese social media app RedNote, also known as Xiaohongshu, some foreign netizens are already running up against the country's extensive censorship apparatus. Newsweek reached out to Xiaohongshu with a request for comment via a general contact email address.

Users looking for a TikTok alternative learn about daily life in China, but some posts are taboo.

"I cannot profess the kind of certainty I would like to have about the arguments and record before us," writes Justice Gorsuch.

In an action without any direct precedent in the United States, the American government forced the temporary shutdown of a major social media network on Saturday for 14 hours, setting a precedent for future violations of First Amendment rights.

After nearly three hours of Supreme Court arguments Friday morning, Americans are one step closer to learning whether a TikTok ban will take effect in nine days.

When asked, for instance, about Chinese censorship of Twitter in 2009 ... approving on Friday a law that would shut off access to TikTok, the U.S. is poised to conduct the exact kind of internet ...

Even Chinese state media noted that Xiaohongshu would find it difficult to adjust its censorship regime to handle American TikTok teens. “The content posted by American users is more diversified ...

"It was a moment of collective effervescence," says Robert ... while TikTok may help creators gain exposure and users engage with the causes they care about, many see evidence of censorship ...

The case hinges on whether TikTok can convince Justices that such a mandate violates the First Amendment by forcing a foreign-controlled app to sell or shut down. As of Friday, they have not — and the Court has compelled Tik-Tok to be sold or shuttered this weekend.

TikTok has said the ban was "conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed, and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people." "The TikTok ban ...