What happens if TikTok gets banned?

TikTok will be banned in the United States on January 19 unless the Supreme Court approves it. Last ditch legal bid Chinese owner ByteDance said doing so would be unconstitutional.

But even if the nation’s highest law enforcement agency agrees with lower courts and Congress that the platforms pose a threat to national security, can they actually stop Americans from using them?

Is there a way to get around the ban? Or can President-elect Donald Trump find a way to stop legislation he says he opposes, even if the courts uphold it?

And what will happen to TikTok, which could benefit from the uncertainty clouding its future?

The most likely way for the U.S. to ban TikTok would be to order app stores like Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store to not allow downloads in the region.

U.S. lawmakers have already told tech companies they are prepared to remove apps from their stores once the ban goes into effect.

This means that people will no longer be able to access TikTok using legal means. But it also means that people who already have TikTok may still have it on their phones.

Since the app is no longer publicly available, new updates can no longer be made available to US users, which makes the app more buggy and eventually unusable.

Not to mention that many updates are coming to fix security holes in the app, so if TikTok stops receiving updates, it could give hackers millions of devices to target.

Of course, there are ways to avoid such a ban.

There are already a number of videos circulating on TikTok teaching users how to use a virtual private network (VPN). A virtual private network (VPN) is a way to make it appear as if you are in another location.

On most devices, you can also change the region of the app store, so theoretically anyone can access apps from other countries. However, this can also lead to other problems, not to mention the possibility of violating your service agreement.

You can also modify your device to install apps downloaded from the Internet. This may violate copyright laws and carries its own risks. But the government is also anticipating this, proposing a ban on providing people access to apps through ‘internet hosting services’.

So if the ban takes this kind of form, people who decide to use TikTok after it goes into effect will likely be able to do so, but it won’t be a familiar experience.

There are still other routes the government could use in the future. India, for example, banned TikTok in 2020 and then ordered internet providers to completely block access to the app.

And even if people used a VPN, there’s still a way for TikTok to theoretically determine whether that person lives in the United States and then display a screen saying the app can’t be used in that country.

It is not yet known whether TikTok will decide to support the government over its own ban, but Reuters reports that it plans to do so.

TikTok’s lawyer said the app would be “invalidated” in the U.S. unless the Supreme Court rules in its favor.

The problem is so complex that even experts are unclear about what will happen next.

Professor Milton L. Mueller of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who filed a legal brief supporting TikTok, said there was a lack of clarity about how far the U.S. could expand its law enforcement powers and what would happen technically if the ban went ahead. He said he didn’t know. It’s hard to decide.

But he said the impact it will have on users and the internet itself is clear.

“It would completely legalize the fragmentation of the Internet along national or jurisdictional lines,” he said.

President Trump made clear his opposition to the law, which was set to take effect the day before his inauguration, and asked the Supreme Court to delay its implementation while he sought a “political solution.”

His incoming national security adviser, Mike Waltz, told Fox News that the president-elect is looking for ways to “preserve” TikTok regardless of the court’s ruling and that Americans’ access to the platform and their data will be preserved.

However, the exact mechanism by which this is done is unclear. According to the Washington Post – One option being considered is for Trump to sign an executive order suspending law enforcement.

“We don’t want to get ahead of the executive order, but we will create space to get that deal done,” Waltz said.

Another option is to allow Trump to keep the law in place but tell the Justice Department not to enforce it.

The government would effectively tell Apple and Google that they will not be punished if they continue to allow access to TikTok. This means that the laws will remain the same, but will be essentially redundant.

Obviously, companies may be uncomfortable with breaking the law even if they’ve been told it’s okay. Because that effectively requires them to take the president’s word for it that they will not be punished.

Until now, ByteDance has been adamant that selling prize assets in the United States is not possible.

But could things change if this were actually banned and a president who prided himself on his “art of the deal” returned to the White House?

Potential buyers keep lining up. Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported. But the company was considering a sale to billionaire Elon Musk. TikTok has since explained this. As “pure fiction”.

Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire businessman Frank McCourt are among those who have previously expressed interest in buying the stock.

Mr. McCourt, a former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, said he had secured a verbal commitment of $20 billion from a consortium of investors to bid for TikTok.

There are proposed owners who are much more left field and much less serious.

The world’s biggest YouTuber MrBeast He claimed he was now rushing to close the deal. This was after billionaires contacted him.

It may seem like a joke, but he has a significant financial incentive to try to save the app. MrBeast has over 100 million followers on TikTok.

TikTok says it will have 170 million users in the U.S. by 2024, spending an average of 51 minutes per day on the app.

Jasmine Enberg, an analyst at Insider Intelligence, says banning TikTok or reducing its usability presents a huge opportunity for big tech competitors.

“Meta-owned Instagram Reels and Google-owned YouTube Shorts are the most natural fit for the users, creators and advertisers they replaced,” she says.

Facebook could also benefit, but Enberg says that like all Meta platforms: Controversial Policy Changes If President Mark Zuckerberg announces it, its appeal is likely to diminish.

Users bring advertisers. Therefore, a ban could be a huge financial boost for those platforms.

Forrester said, “Chief marketing officers (CMOs) we spoke to confirmed that if they could no longer advertise on TikTok, they would shift their media dollars to Meta and Google. This is the same behavior we saw when India banned TikTok in 2020. “It is,” he said. Senior Analyst Kelsey Chickering.

Lemon8, owned by ByteDance, would have been an obvious place for those banned to go. However, the law also provides that it applies to other apps owned or operated by the company. This means that Lemon8 will probably face becoming inaccessible in the United States as well.

Other potential winners include Twitch, which has made a name for itself hosting live streaming, a popular feature on TikTok. Twitch is especially well-known among gamers, but it continues to grow with other content.

Other Chinese-owned platforms; Like Xiaohongshu – Known as RedNote among US users – has seen rapid growth in the US and UK.

Still, some suggest that no existing app can replace TikTok. In particular, the TikTok Shop feature allows users to purchase products directly from videos and makes American creators a lot of money.

Craig Atkinson, CEO of digital marketing agency Code3, said there were no direct competitors that people could easily switch to, and noted that his agency was signing new deals with clients to build TikTok Shop campaigns by the end of December.