The US Supreme Court appeared likely to uphold a law that would force TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance to sell the wildly popular online video-sharing platform or shut it down.
A majority of the conservative and liberal justices on the nine-member bench appeared skeptical of arguments by a lawyer for TikTok that forcing a sale was a violation of First Amendment free speech rights.
Signed by President Joe Biden in April, the law passed by Congress would block TikTok, which boasts 170 million American users, from US app stores and web hosting services unless ByteDance divests from the social media platform by January 19.
The US government alleges TikTok allows Beijing to collect data and…