Donald Trump is posing as the savior of around 170 million Tiktok users in the USA - although he once wanted to ban the app himself

Tiktok has just founded a subsidiary in Switzerland, and in the USA the app and thus the company are likely to be shut down. The story is quickly told: A law passed by the US Congress last year practically makes it impossible to use the app and forces it to be sold to an American company. Complaints from Tiktok about the violation of the First Amendment, the constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression, were unsuccessful in all instances.

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the law does not prohibit the content distributed by Tiktok. It is primarily aimed at preventing the misuse of user data and its possible disclosure to the Chinese authorities, which the parent company Bytedance could be forced to do. This means that freedom of expression is not fundamentally affected and the law serves a legitimate purpose. The law, which was supported by Democrats and Republicans at the time, would have come into force one day before Trump took office. As one of his first official acts, Trump granted a two-and-a-half-month delay.

If you look closely, the story contains many inconsistencies. This begins with the stay granted by Trump. He instructs the Justice Department to tolerate the violation of the law for the time being. The law itself set the date of its entry into force. The president cannot override a law passed by Congress. The separation of powers does not allow this. In practice, however, Trump is doing exactly that, as he has done with numerous other executive orders.

Trump wants to expand the power of the executive branch at the expense of the legislature. During his first term in office, the same President Trump tried to do exactly the same thing as Congress in an executive order: either ban the distribution of the Tiktok app or force Bytedance to sell to a US company. The courts put an end to this attempt. Now it's Trump's about-face, who probably wants to portray himself as the savior of around 170 million Tiktok users in the USA.

Bytedance, the owner of Tiktok, is a company domiciled in China, but around 60 percent of the shares are held by foreign investors, including well-known companies such as Blackrock, Carlyle Group and Softbank, which are largely American-controlled. Tiktok is therefore nowhere near as Chinese as it seems.

The law is not an actual ban on Tiktok, even though the media often talk about a ban. Rather, US companies are prohibited from distributing, maintaining or contributing to the app. It remains unclear to what extent the app would have been able to continue to be used to the same extent as before with this ban. Given the political implications and possible financial sanctions, US companies reacted quickly and stopped all support. Tiktok itself also temporarily closed access, although it was unclear whether there was an obligation to do so. It is reasonable to assume that the aim was to put pressure on Trump because millions of Americans use the app. This pressure has obviously worked. Because of the temporary ban, many users have switched to other Chinese apps, such as Rednote, which is even more Chinese-dominated than Tiktok. As a mass phenomenon, this would have clearly contradicted Congress's considerations.

He justified the measures against Tiktok by saying that the app endangers the security of the USA. These security considerations, which are protected by the Supreme Court, appear to be far less substantial than they seem. Until recently, most user data could be bought from data brokers. The new law has banned this. But ultimately it is the USA itself that allows the trade and use of data because the level of data protection is very low.

The Tiktok law now creates different categories of portals in the USA, which are subject to different legal regimes. American providers are subject to a very low level of data protection, while foreign portals controlled by hostile states are subject to a very high level. China and Russia in particular are affected. This means that power-political considerations overshadow security aspects. When you consider that the US President and Elon Musk own social networks, the question arises as to the extent to which economic self-interests are also at play. It is clear that Congress in its current composition will neither strengthen data protection nor enact more effective regulation of platforms.

Despite all the inconsistencies, one thing is clear: Tiktok is facing closure in the US. Will this also be the case in Europe? European data protection legislation is definitely much more effective than American legislation.

Urs Saxer is a lawyer and professor at the University of Zurich. He specializes in constitutional and media law.