Here’s What Happens If the US Bans TikTok

TikTok is an app in the US right now. There is a good chance that you are using it yourself. (Perhaps you just broke away from a binge to read this article.) But the fate of the app, at least in the US, is unclear: legislators seem ready, if not voracious, to either force the app to be sold to a US company or banned altogether. The question is, what happens if they do?

Why does the US government want to ban TikTok?

As much as those of us who love the platform would like to hear about it, when it comes to TikTok, there are legitimate national security concerns, namely how parent company ByteDance handles data in the US. Many of us Americans use the app: 150 million active users in the US, according to TikTok CEO Show Zi Chu . Like many popular social media apps, TikTok receives a lot of information from us, from contacts to browsing history and activity on other apps and websites. We all know that these companies collect our data; however, ByteDance is a Chinese company, which complicates the user privacy situation.

In December, the company admitted that employees received invalid data from American journalists while trying to discover sources of internal leaks. These employees accessed the IP addresses of the journalists, as well as the data of people close to those journalists, in an attempt to find out if these journalists were in close proximity to any ByteDance employees. Creepy things.

While ByteDance subsequently fired the employees involved, the issue exposed the Chinese company’s ability to access sensitive US user data. Under Chinese law , the government also has the right to require this information from companies such as ByteDance if it is of national security importance. It is easy to see how this data can be misused. There are even concerns that the government could channel ByteDance to influence the type of content delivered to Americans, from disinformation to propaganda.

While these concerns are valid, Congress didn’t fare well in its big TikTok hearings. Many on the committee saw the hearings as more of a media show than an opportunity to find out the truth about how TikTok is using (or abusing) US user data. In their interviews and speech, some legislators have shown how woefully ignorant they are when it comes to technology. When the US representative asks the question “Does TikTok have access to your home Wi-Fi network”, you understand that you have problems:

It is these videos that are currently circulating on the Internet, especially among young people who see the actions of the government here as the result of their own ignorance and fear of the platform itself. TikTok may be popular with Americans, but it’s extremely popular with teens and young adults , and they see the potential ban as an attack on a platform that lawmakers don’t understand or control. Genuine concerns expressed, such as whether TikTok sells its user data to third parties , have been undermined by points such as this one:

Haven’t we been here before?

Yes! The Trump administration tried to ban TikTok by presidential order back in 2020 due to similar concerns. This order was overturned in court , but the uncertainty of the situation prompted TikTok to develop ” Project Texas “, a plan to outsource any TikTok operations involving user data in the US to an independent entity that does not report to ByteDance. The Project Texas transition has been underway since July 2022, including hosting all US TikTok user data on the US Oracle Cloud.

While TikTok wants Project Texas to allay concerns about data misuse, it doesn’t seem to be working as US lawmakers are hell-bent on banning the app or forcing it to be sold to a US company.

What happens if the US bans TikTok?

In short, nothing at first if you are one of the hundreds of millions of Americans with TikTok on your smartphone. If the ban does pass and wins any court objections that are bound to come up, Apple and Google will immediately remove it from their app stores. This means that you will not be able to download the application if it is not installed on your device after being blocked.

However, neither Google nor Apple can remove the app from your phone on their end. If you already have TikTok on your device, it will stay there even if the government destroys it. Theoretically, you will still be able to access the service, albeit now with a limited audience (hundreds of millions of Americans). However , it is entirely possible that Congress will force ISPs to block access to TikTok , effectively killing the platform, whether or not you had it on your device beforehand. This is what the government of India did when they banned TikTok so no one can access the app as is.

However, the real problem comes with time. Since the app will no longer be in the App Store and Play Store, it will not receive future software updates. Your particular TikTok app will be frozen in time, forever remaining at the latest version available before the ban takes effect. This is a problem for two reasons: First, the TikTok developers will not be able to release security updates to the app to address any vulnerabilities that are discovered in the future. This poses a serious security risk: if attackers expose an exploit through a TikTok vulnerability, you will leave yourself open to attack, and since TikTok is banned in this scenario, the company will not be able to help you.

However, a bigger existential issue for TikTok is the blocking of software updates after a potential ban. Not only will the company not be able to release patches for security vulnerabilities, they will no longer be able to send general updates to make the app work on your iPhone or Android device. Over time, the app will lose compatibility with the latest versions of iOS and Android and stop working. RIP TikTok.

There are potential workarounds here. VPNs will be a way for Americans to access TikTok, as the technology makes it look like your connection is coming from another country. But that’s probably too many extra steps for most American TikTok users. So any ban will effectively kill access to the app for most Americans.

In short, it’s a big mess

There are many different facets to this story. Creators who have built their brands and businesses on the app are now afraid of what’s going on in the post-TikTok world; there is a potential political backlash to the ban as young people already hate the government for harassing their favorite social media platforms; and US social media companies are also eager for a ban as their share prices are likely to skyrocket . Instagram and YouTube have been spending all this time copying TikTok’s video features for good reason.

However, it also speaks to our government’s lack of interest in the serious solutions to the problems that TikTok represents. Banning TikTok would prevent Americans from giving their data to ByteDance, but would do nothing to prevent an insane amount of data being leaked to any other company that Americans use, including other software owned by Chinese companies. As Even Greer, director of Fight for the Future, said : “If politicians want to protect Americans from surveillance, they should advocate for a basic privacy law that prohibits all companies from collecting so much sensitive data about us. instead of engaging in what amounts to a xenophobic show that does absolutely nothing to protect anyone.”