As Supreme Court ponders fate of TikTok, ByteDance has a backup plan

On Friday, the Supreme Court holds the fate of many of the nation’s content creators in its hands. TikTok parent company ByteDance wants the court to halt a bipartisan law that would require the company to sell the social video platform to a U.S. company. The law set a Jan. 19 deadline for that sale.

But even as ByteDance, a Chinese company, pleads its case in court, the company does seem to have a backup plan.

The government says TikTok is a national security risk for the U.S. and a privacy risk for users. But now, president-elect Trump is asking the court to put the law on hold.

So, “the parent company ByteDance is dragging its feet on implementing this,” said Dan Wang, a professor at Columbia Business School. “It is also raising concerns that this is a violation of free speech rights as well.”

In the meantime, “I think advertisers, brands, agencies have had plenty of time to start thinking about what comes next after a potential ban,” said Joe Fried, a media consultant and CEO of advertising firm AdOps.AI.

And ByteDance has been encouraging users to sign up for another one of its platforms, called Lemon8, in the hopes of preserving some of its audience — just in case.

“TikTok could make that pitch to its users that, ‘Hey, all you gotta do is move over here, and now Congress has a moving target,” said Mark Miller, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, which advocates for limited government. “The law is not written in a way that ByteDance couldn’t try and use that way to circumvent the law.”

Whether that particular dance would fly in court? Who’s to say.