What a TikTok ban in the US could mean for you

No, TikTok will not suddenly disappear from your phone. You also won’t go to jail if you continue to use it after you’ve been banned.

After years of attempts to ban the Chinese-owned app, including from former President Donald Trump, a measure to ban the popular video-sharing app has won congressional approval and is on its way to President Biden for his signature. The move gives ByteDance, the Beijing-based parent company, nine months to sell the company, with a possible additional three months if the sale is ongoing. Otherwise, TikTok will be banned.

So what does this mean for you, a TikTok user or perhaps the parent of a TikTok user? Here are some important questions and answers.

When does the ban come into effect?

The original proposal gave ByteDance just six months to divest from its US subsidiary, but negotiations extended the deadline to nine. Then, if the sale is already underway, the company will have another three months to complete it.

Therefore, it would be at least a year before the ban came into force – but with likely court challenges, this could extend even longer, perhaps years. TikTok has had some success with legal challenges in the past, but has never sought to block federal legislation from taking effect.

What if I already downloaded it?

TikTok, used by more than 170 million Americans, probably won’t disappear from your phone even if an eventual ban goes into effect. But it would disappear from Apple and Google’s app stores, meaning users won’t be able to download it. It would also mean that TikTok would not be able to push out updates, security patches, and bug fixes, and over time the app would likely become unusable – not to mention the security risk.

But surely there are alternative solutions?

Teenagers are known for bypassing parental controls and bans when it comes to social media, so avoiding the US government’s ban is certainly not outside the realm of possibility. For example, users may try to mask their location using a VPN or virtual private network, use alternative app stores, or even install a foreign SIM card in their phone.

But some technology knowledge is required, and it’s not clear what will and won’t work. Most likely, users will migrate to another platform — like Instagram, which has a TikTok-like feature called Reels, or YouTube, which has incorporated short vertical videos into its feed to try to compete with TikTok. Oftentimes, these videos are taken directly from TikTok itself. And popular creators are likely to be found on other platforms as well, so you’ll probably be able to see the same things.

“The TikTok bill relies heavily on the control that Apple and Google maintain over their smartphone platforms because the bill’s main mechanism is to instruct Apple and Google to stop allowing the TikTok app on their respective stores. applications,” said Dean Ball, a researcher at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. “Such a mechanism may be much less effective in the world imagined by many advocates of antitrust and aggressive regulation against big technology companies.”

Should I worry about using TikTok?

Lawmakers from both parties — as well as law enforcement and intelligence officials — have long expressed concerns that Chinese authorities could force ByteDance to hand over data on the 170 million Americans who use TikTok. The concern stems from a set of Chinese national security laws that oblige organizations to help gather intelligence — to which ByteDance would likely be subject — and other far-reaching ways in which the country’s authoritarian government exerts control.

Data privacy experts say, however, that the Chinese government could easily obtain information about Americans in other ways, including through commercial data brokers that sell or rent personal information.

Lawmakers and some administration officials have also expressed concerns that China could — potentially — direct or influence ByteDance to suppress or increase content on TikTok that is favorable to its interests. TikTok, for its part, denied claims that it could be used as a tool of the Chinese government. The company also said it has never shared US user data with Chinese authorities and will not do so if asked.

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