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TikTok has urged a federal appeals court to block a law that could soon ban the social media app in the US over national security concerns related to its Chinese parent, arguing the consequences of such a move would be “staggering” for free speech.

Under the law signed by President Joe Biden earlier this year, TikTok will be banned in the US if it does not divest from its parent ByteDance by January 19 2025 — the day before the next US president is inaugurated. It comes as US officials have warned Beijing could compel the parent group to share the personal information of its 170mn American users for espionage purposes or manipulate what users see for propaganda purposes.

During a hearing before a three-judge panel in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Monday, Andrew Pincus, a partner at Mayer Brown representing TikTok, invoked first amendment free speech protections in the constitution and pushed back against the argument that the video app was controlled by China or had posed a national security threat.

“For the first time in history, Congress has expressly targeted a specific US speaker, banning its speech and the speech of 170mn Americans,” Pincus said.

“This law imposes extraordinary speech prohibition based on indeterminate future risks,” he said, adding the government had “not come anywhere near” proving the constitutionality of the law.

Pincus said remedies such as forcing the “disclosure” of any potential propaganda found on TikTok should be explored, rather than a full ban of the app.

However, one judge suggested TikTok was taking a “blinkered view” by arguing the statute was singling out a specific company, when it was targeting those owned by foreign adversaries. Another said it was “strange” that the lawyer appeared to be asking the judges require Congress to provide more “findings” to support the law when it had already been passed.

The outcome of the legal battle will seal the fate of a fast-growing app that has in recent years exploded in popularity to challenge Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube. It has also become a vital tool in the US election for the campaigns of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, who have seized on it as a way to reach young voters directly.

Pincus said the law is in effect a ban, arguing a sale would be “unfeasible” because a standalone US app would not be possible. TikTok has previously noted Beijing has publicly said it would not allow the divestiture of platform’s recommendations algorithm by ByteDance, and has export control laws that would block such a spin-off.

One of the core issues of contention was how much influence ByteDance exerts over the video app in the US. Daniel Tenny, a lawyer for the US Department of Justice, argued there was “no dispute” that the parent group maintained and developed TikTok’s recommendation engine.

He warned its data could be “extremely valuable to a foreign adversary trying to compromise the security states, [for] knowing what Americans’ patterns are, who their contacts are, where they go, who they interact with, what sorts of content interests them”.

Nevertheless, much of the US government’s evidence is classified, meaning it cannot be seen by TikTok, on the basis that sharing it could cause serious harm to national security.

It is not the first time the app has fought a potential US shutdown. In 2020, TikTok successfully sued the US government when then-president Trump issued an executive order to ban the app, giving ByteDance 90 days to divest from its American assets and any data that TikTok had collected in the country.

Trump has since flipped his position, arguing he would not ban TikTok as it is in the interests of competition in the social media sector that it remains in the US.

“All good here.”

Those were some of the final words that the doomed Titan submersible crew communicated before the submersible imploded on its mission to the Titanic wreckage site in June 2023.

The message, revealed as part of the Coast Guard’s Monday hearing into the circumstances of the failed mission, was sent to support vessel Polar Prince on June 18, 2023, shortly before the submersible imploded, killing all five of its crew members. It was an incident that captivated both sides of the Atlantic as crews made a mad dash to save the crew after the sub lost contact with the surface – with the world unaware that the lives had been lost.

The Coast Guard played an animated re-enactment of the Titan’s voyage that captured the submersible’s final, spotty exchange with the Polar Prince, during the Monday hearing that shed new light on the sub’s final mission.

Around 10am on June 18, Polar Prince asked the Titan crew whether they were able to see the support vessel on the submersible’s display. The support vessel asked the crew the same question seven times over the course of seven minutes. The Titan crew then sent “k,” meaning it was asking for a communications check.

The Polar Prince then repeated its question three more times before writing: “I need better comms from you.” The crew finally replied “yes” at 10.14am before adding: “All good here.”

At 10.47am, the communication between the two vessels was lost.

All five of its crew members later died as a result of the implosion: founder Stockton Rush, 61, French explorer Paul Henri Nargeolet, 77, British explorer Hamish Harding, 58, UK-based Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48 and his 19-year-old son Suleman.

​In its presentation on Monday, the Coast Guard also revealed a pattern of failures that the Titan experienced during its test dives long before it set out to the wreckage site.

Test dives in 2021 revealed 70 equipment issues while dives the following year revealed 48 equipment issues, including drop weights malfunction. On top of those issues, after the last test dive in 2022 until February 6, 2023, the vessel was stored uncovered in a dock “without protection from the elements.”

The first witness before the panel, Tony Nissen, former OceanGate engineering director, took the stand on Monday, pulling back the curtain on the internal dynamics of the company as well as some disagreements between Stockton Rush and OceanGate employees.

When Nissen was hired, he wasn’t directly told that the submersible was going to the wreckage site. He testified: “I was never told they were going to the Titanic.”

Nissen also said he was “struggling to find the professional words” to describe Rush.

“Stockton would fight for what he wanted…And he wouldn’t give an inch much. At all,” he said. “Most people would eventually back down from Stockton. It was like death by a thousand cuts.”

The submersible was struck by lightning in 2018, partially damaging the hull, Nissen testified. The following year, after finding that the accoustic tests were not coming out “clean,” he objected an expedition to the Titanic site, since he found the hull was compromised. After refusing to give his approval, he was fired. He told the panel: “I wouldn’t sign off on it. So I got terminated.”

When asked if there was “pressure” to start operations, Nissen said: “100 percent.”

The Coast Guard is investigating the circumstances surrounding the loss of the submersible, Marine Board of the Investigation chair Jason Neubauer said.

The investigation will look for “factors” that led to this catastrophe and try to learn how to prevent them in the future as well as examine whether the “acts of misconduct, negligence, or willful violation of the law” contributed to these casualties. The hearings, expected to span two weeks, will also investigate the Coast Guard’s search and rescue operations.