乔·拜登的连任竞选团队希望大家知道总统很有幽默感。为证明这点，他的TikTok页面上几乎每天都会有人发布一些搞笑视频。其中一个视频用火焰表情符号点缀，展示了他打趣唐纳德·特朗普的场景。观众们开玩笑道，他不是要禁掉这个应用吗?

Joe Biden’s re-election campaign wants you to know that the president is funny. To prove it, examples of his hilarity are posted almost daily to his TikTok page. One video, peppered with fire emojis, shows him cracking jokes about Donald Trump. Viewers have their own gag: isn’t he trying to ban this app?

政府称其并非禁止TikTok运行，而是给它下了最后通牒:要么在明年1月前转让给合适的非中国籍公司，要么就关闭。政府认为，由中国字节跳动公司所属的TikTok受“外国对手”控制，构成国家安全威胁。政客指控中国利用TikTok来窃取美国人的数据，并进行宣传活动。

The government says it is not banning TikTok but has given it an ultimatum: sell to a suitable non-Chinese owner by January or shut down. It deems TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese firm, to be controlled by a “foreign adversary” and to be a national-security threat. Politicians accuse China of using TikTok to steal Americans’ data and spread propaganda.

TikTok驳斥上述指控并提起诉讼。其用户亦是如此。用户称强行转让“根本不可能”(因为中国能够阻止)，且国会“把TikTok单拎出来并颁发禁令”，这侵犯了1.7亿美国用户的宪法第一修正案权利。游说团体美国公民自由联盟的阿诗勒·高斯基(Ashley Gorski)表示，通过设限将国家安全凌驾于言论之上是“相当高的门槛”。政府此举需要坚实的证据表明TikTok造成了迫在眉睫的严重威胁，而高斯基女士及其他人认为政府目前无法提供相关证据。立法者私下里已收到有关TikTok所具风险的简报，但向公众披露的不多

TikTok denies these charges and is suing. So are its users. They argue that divestment is “simply not possible” (China could block it) and Congress is “singling out and banning TikTok”, in violation of the First Amendment rights of its 170m American users. Imposing restrictions on speech in favour of national security is an “extraordinarily high bar”, says Ashley Gorski of the American Civil Liberties Union, an advocacy group. It requires concrete evidence that TikTok poses an imminent, serious threat—something Ms Gorski and others argue the government has not provided. Lawmakers were briefed on TikTok’s risks in private, but little has been made public.