The US government has been toying with a possible ban on Chinese-owned social video platform TikTok for years, citing national security, data privacy, and propaganda concerns. After the issue heated up this spring, the app’s fate may soon be determined. Here’s the latest.
For context: In April, President Joe Biden signed a bill into law that would ban TikTok in the US if its parent company, ByteDance, failed to sell the app within a year (as in, right around now). This started the divest-or-ban clock for ByteDance to make its move.
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The company was given an initial nine months to sort out a deal — with a possible three-month extension, contingent on progress — but ByteDance has maintained the app isn’t up for grabs. TikTok took its case to the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS), arguing that a ban would be a First Amendment violation.
On Friday, SCOTUS ruled against TikTok, enforcing the ban.
However, there are several reasons to believe this doesn’t mean TikTok will be inaccessible come Sunday, the sell-by deadline. Both Biden and President-elect Donald Trump have been exploring ways to delay the ban, including by executive order. TikTok CEO Shou Chew is also now reportedly attending Trump’s inauguration on Monday, which some believe lends credence to Trump’s intention to block the ban.
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The fact that both the outgoing and incoming presidential administrations are invested in a workaround would seem to work in TikTok’s favor, at least temporarily. Neither administration would have the power to reverse the ban, however — only delay it and find a workaround to protect American user data or buy more time for a sale.
Will TikTok be inaccessible on Jan. 19?
It’s still unclear what the US government will do. Either way, NBC reported that TikTok is preparing to become unavailable on Sunday, meaning “going dark” or remaining accessible without updates. At the same time, alternative apps are already popping up.
While the incoming Trump administration has not indicated it would enforce the ban, theoretically, people in the US will no longer be able to download TikTok come Sunday, and those who have it on their phones already will no longer receive software updates, which will effectively render it useless and remove its appeal.
TikTok has been under intense scrutiny by the US government for years. Officials unanimously passed legislation to ban the platform in March. During his first term, President Donald Trump attempted to force ByteDance to sell the app to American tech giant Microsoft in 2020. Over the last few months, as the sale clock winds down, many Americans have organized against the impending ban and urged representatives to see it as a violation of free speech.
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Since then, countries worldwide have banned TikTok on government-owned devices, and US state governments have passed legislation to ban the app, citing national security concerns.
The April law is called “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” (PAFACA). Although the bill doesn’t directly address TikTok, US House representatives sponsoring the bill frequently referenced TikTok in statements regarding the legislation. The law allows the president to identify applications associated with adversarial countries and ban them from app stores and web hosting services. However, applications can avoid a ban by cutting ties with the hostile country within 270 days.
Is TikTok a national security threat?
Lawmakers warn that TikTok can be used as a tool for the Chinese government to spy on Americans, influence elections, and derail American national security. No concrete evidence has been made public that TikTok is a national security concern, but US government officials have remained firm on that sentiment. Others have argued about the threat of deepfake propaganda disseminated via the app. Of course, TikTok denies it shares US user data with the Chinese government.
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Since 2020, both the Biden and Trump administrations have flip-flopped on the ban, moving it forward at times before backtracking and vice-versa. Both now appear to be backtracking.